Exhibition

  • Made in Tokyo: Architecture and Living, 1964/2020
    Momoyo Kaijima and Yoshiharu Tsukamoto (Atelier Bow-Wow)
    Curators
    Japan Society, New York
    Oct 11, 2019 to Jan 26, 2020
  • GRANTEE
    Japan Society
    GRANT YEAR
    2018

Hybrid Vernacular Architecture example, Highway Department Store, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan. Photo: Atelier Bow-Wow

Made in Tokyo: Architecture and Living, 1964/2020 is the first exhibition on Tokyo's unique and dynamic post-WWII built environment as it developed during periods of boom and bust, changing populations and disaster. Curated by Momoyo Kaijima and Yoshiharu Tsukamoto of the research-based architectural practice Atelier Bow-Wow, the show investigates residential variations, inexpensive, space-saving innovations, hybrid typologies and common space through the lenses of gathering, learning, sharing and exchange.

Made in Tokyo is curated by Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima, cofounders and principals of Atelier Bow-Wow, an architectural firm based in Tokyo with laboratories at the Tokyo Institute of Technology Department of Architecture and University of Tsukuba Art and Design School. Atelier Bow-Wow has designed and built over 90 residential, institutional, commercial, and public spaces since its founding in 1992, including the Jig House (Funabashi, 2003), Nora House (Sendai, 2006) and the Hanamidori Cultural Center (2005). They have contributed installations to 65 cultural and expositional events, showing four times at the Venice Architecture Biennale, most recently in 2016 with The Timber Network, a concept for a working forest management station designed to closely link urban dwellers with natural resources. Atelier Bow-Wow has lectured, published, and exhibited extensively around their design and anthropological theories, which include Pet Architecture, small structures squeezed into left-over spaces, Behaviorology, how the understanding of the complex relationship between people, the built environment, and urban space leads to architecture, Da Me Architecture, an honest design response to the conditions of the found site, and Generational Typology, based on the traditional machiya—townhouses/merchant houses constructed in the Edo Period, among others. Publications include Bow Wow from Post Bubble City (Inax, 2006) and Echo of Space/Space of Echo (Inax, 2009). Tsukamoto did both his undergraduate and graduate work at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. He has been a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the University of California at Los Angeles and has taught at the Tokyo Institute of Technology since 2000. Kaijima holds advanced degrees in architecture and engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. She has been a visiting professor at ETH Zurich and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and has taught at the University of Tsukuba since 2009.

Japan Society is the leading US organization committed to deepening mutual understanding between the United States and Japan in a global context. Founded in 1907, the Society serves over 65,000 visitors from the Tri-State Area annually through innovative programs in arts and culture, public policy, business, language, and global K-12 education.