Gallery Ma Exhibition Tour: Kazuo Shinohara’s “Inscribe Eternity in Space―A centennial exhibition with 100 questions”

Join AIA Japan for a special guided tour of Gallery Ma’s latest exhibition honoring the centennial of Kazuo Shinohara, one of Japan’s most influential architects. Inscribe Eternity in Space explores Shinohara’s lasting impact through 100 provocative questions about architecture and space. This event is free and open to all.  CES credits available for AIA Members.

Registration here (via Peatix app)!

Gallery Ma Tour: Kazuo Shinohara: Inscribe Eternity in Space – A Centennial Exhibition with 100 Questions
Date: Saturday, June 21, 2025
Time: 9:30 AM
Location: Gallery Ma, Tokyo
After event: After the tour, we invite you to please join us to continue the conversation afterwards over coffee and casual brunch (paid by guests) nearby!

Gallery Ma Exhibit Description:

TOTO GALLERY・MA announces new exhibition “Kazuo Shinohara: Inscribe Eternity in Space – a centennial exhibition with 100 questions” to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of architect Kazuo Shinohara.

Kazuo Shinohara (1925–2006) studied under Kiyoshi Seike (1918–2005) at Tokyo Institute of Technology (now Institute of Science Tokyo). Upon graduating, Shinohara began his career as a professor architect at the same university. He set up Shinohara Atelier upon his retirement from teaching, with its base in his own house and studio, House in Yokohama (1985), where he continued to produce designs and theoretical writings. Many architects who came under his influence now stand at the forefront of the global architectural scene, including members of the so-called “Shinohara School” that consisted of Itsuko Hasegawa, Toyo Ito, and Kazunari Sakamoto.

Kazuo Shinohara proclaimed that “a house is a work of art” and devoted a great deal of energy to the design of small houses. Shinohara’s houses are now undergoing a period of re-assessment in Japan and overseas, praised as one of the pinnacles of Japan’s achievements in residential design. Published together with this proclamation was one of his early masterpieces, Umbrella House (1961), which was relocated and resurrected in 2022 on the campus of Vitra in Weil am Rhein, Germany, just outside of Basel. House in White (1966), House of Earth (1966), and Tanikawa House (1974) have all been preserved through renovation or even relocation efforts.

For this exhibition, we welcome guest curators Shin-ichi Okuyama, Momoyo Kaijima, and Seng Kuan as our collaborators. Focusing on the theme of “eternity,” the exhibition reconsiders the image of Shinohara as an architect who continuously asked himself questions throughout his life.

The exhibition features original objects such as the drawings, models, sketches, as well as furniture produced by Shinohara Laboratory. These exhibits are framed through 100 questions extracted from Shinohara writings, following the self-described trajectory from the First Style to the Fourth Style and revealing new insights into both his professional activities and Shinohara as an individual.

The exhibition further includes sketches of Shinohara’s unfinished work House in Tateshina (2006, study), which anticipates an eventual Fifth Style.

We hope this exhibition will help convey to future generations Shinohara’s legacy in space making and architectural discourse.

Biographies:

Seng Kuan is an architectural historian and theorist. He is Project Associate Professor and Director of the International Architectural Education Platform at the University of Tokyo and Lecturer in Architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He has written extensively on Japan’s postwar architectural culture, including the “land, water, and sky” trilogy on the Metabolists; the role of structural engineering in modern Japanese architecture; and books on Tange Kenzō and Shinohara Kazuo. As Chief Editorial Advisor to a+u, Seng oversees the editorial agenda of the Tokyo-based journal. He is also a member of the Planning and Management Committee of TOTO Gallery MA in Tokyo.
Exhibitions play a major role in Seng’s research methodology. His curatorial work includes Utopia Across Scales: Highlights from the Kenzō Tange Archive (GSD 2009); Metabolism: City of the Future (Mori Art Museum, 2011); and Shinohara Kazuo (Kemper Art Museum 2014; ETH Zürich 2016; GSD 2019). His research projects have been recognized with major grants from Graham Foundation and the Japan Foundation.

Koshiro Ogura is an architect and researcher focusing on architectural drawings and archival materials. He obtained degrees in architecture from Tokyo Tech (BEng, 2019; MEng, 2021) and was an Academic Guest at ETH Zürich (2022-2023). He is an assistant curator of the “Kazuo Shinohara Inscribe Eternity in Space A centennial exhibition with 100 questions” at TOTO Gallery MA.