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7 - seven - nana - sept |
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When the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo invited us to mount an exhibition to inaugurate the gallery in its new building, we saw the honour as an opportunity to celebrate the making of architecture. At the outset we felt that for the exhibition to be representative and provocative, it would need to transcend the intellectual understanding of our work. To achieve this and to communicate our philosophy and methodology of design, we approached our task as architectural design rather than as an exhibition design project. In this way, instead of imagining one of our spaces, visitors to the exhibition could experience it first-hand. The notion behind the design of the space is that the Gallery is analogous to the mind of the designer. Like the mind, the Gallery houses thoughts which are represented as objects. The exhibition represents a section through the mind, exploring the two sides of the brain -- the intuitive and the analytical. Thus the exhibition is in two parts separated by a soft translucent screen.
Viewers are led through one of the openings in the screen into the second half of the exhibition which focuses on the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo. Here, the analytical side of the mind is seen and the story of the process of designing is told. The visitor encounters a continuous platform on which a series of objects reveal the evolution of the conceptual ideas into architectural forms. "Architectural creation is not invention but discovery; it is not a pursuit of something beyond the imagination but the externalization of the collective imagination of an age." Fumihiko Maki Ajon Moriyama
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Six of our projects are represented on one side of the exhibition by six totems. When one visits a building and later attempts to recall it, much is forgotten. Sometimes only a few details remain; other times a general impression sticks in the mind. By creating memories, we hoped to give viewers as much of a sense of these projects as possible without an actual visit. It is these memories that we are trying to capture with the totems. Emerging out of the totems, the symbolic elements borrowed from each of the projects reveal the essence of their spaces. Walking among the totems, viewers are engaged by the architect's imagination.