Junya Ishigami

The exhibition devoted to Junya Ishigami’s work at the arc en rêve in Bordeaux depicts an unusual architectural display, light and fragile, where small art pieces are lined on 8 white tables.

Among the huge building projects and the spectacle of shopping centre architecture that are sprawl around in our cities, it is almost impossible to feel the real relationship of the architectural form in accordance with human relations.

“Junya Ishigami: petit? grand? l’espace infini de l’architecture”, arc en rêve, Bordeaux

The issue here, in the exhibition devoted to the work of Junya Ishigami jointly organised by the arc en reve centre d’architecture and deSingel “Junya Ishigami: petit? grand? l’espace infini de l’architecture” is not about starting from the critics of the dichotomy between human scale and architectural form. It is, in reverse, about thinking on the intertwined relation between human action and things that develops its form consequently. In this exhibition, the models of Ishigami’s works were realised in different materials – from paper to wood – and they are tiny crafted, representing not only one particular aspect of his architectural projects, but representing instead his understanding of space, form and human interaction.

This exhibition also depicts an unusual architectural display, which differs from most of the current architecture exhibitions hosting large-scale projects. The models – or I rather will call them sculptures, small art pieces – are lined on 8 white tables 9.21 metres long and 0.31 metres wide, 1 cm thick. And the tables were seeming very light and fragile as works itself. The tiny models of humans, buildings, plants, geology and other objects inform us not only about the approach of Ishigami’s architecture and tendency towards his understanding to design, but also about his inspiration derived from everyday life actions.

The exhibition makes also a strong affect on the landscape as part of architectural forms rather than usual representative function of landscapes or rather being exploited by huge architectural design projects. As he points on his approach in a recent interview: “I would like to regard plant life not just as a landscape element but as an element equivalent to buildings in the formation of space”. Plant life and landscape are almost separated from human life and they are not considered shaping the space in our architectural environment.

Ishigami reminds us the small distances that occurr between us and the space around us and the intertwined life of plants in a non naive way and through space.