Sou Fujimoto: The Latest Architecture and News

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Photographer Laurian Ghinitoiu has captured the collaboration of the Swedish fashion retailer COS and Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto for this year's Salone del Mobile in Milan.

"In this installation for COS, I envisage to make a forest of light," said Fujimoto. "A forest which consists of countless light cones made from spotlights above. These lights pulsate and constantly undergo transience of state and flow. People meander through this forest, as if lured by the charm of the light. Light and people interact with one another, its existence defining the transition of the other."

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Réinventer.paris has announced the 23 winners chosen to develop architectural projects in Paris, including designs by Sou Fujimoto, David Chipperfield, and DGT Architects. Réinventer.paris is an urban initiative launched to give designers the power to rethink and reshape the way that Parisians live, work, and play. Located on various sites chosen by Mayor Anne Hidalgo, each project successfully creates a sense of liveliness and embodies what the future of Paris might be. The call for submissions was answered with ideas about innovation, cutting edge-solutions to environmental problems, and intelligent design.

Following the recent trend of luxury pre-fabricated structures like Muji’s recent three huts, Robbie Antonio’s “Revolution Pre-Crafted” is a collection of pre-fabricated pavilions by 30 top designers and architects, including Zaha Hadid, Sou Fujimoto, Daniel Libeskind and Gluckman Tang. Some have already been built, being exhibited at Design Miami, while others are planned for the future.

With recent advancements in building technology, Revolution Pre-Crafted hopes to democratize the design of pre-fab structures, offering a line of products that incorporate the distinct spatial and social brands of the designers. See a selection of the Revolution Precraft line after the break.

Sou Fujimoto Architects' "Architecture is Everywhere" was among the ArchDaily editors' favorite exhibitions in the Chicago Architecture Biennial. The thought-provoking, entertaining collection of mundane objects truly embraced the idea that the public—not solely architects—should be included in the Biennial's celebration of architecture.

Before the fruits of architectural labor are realized, we rarely revel in the seeds cultivated in the minds of architects. It's hard to capture these formative ideas, much less present them in a way that seizes the satisfying moment in which architecture is "found." 

The deceiving simplicity of displaying "found architecture" actually imparts a deeper, thoughtful lesson, which Fujimoto has inscribed on an accompanying placard "Architecture could come into being from anywhere. I believe fostering that architecture-to-be into real architecture itself is also architecture."

At this year’s Paris Fashion Week, Switzerland-based fashion house Akris showed its 2016 Spring/Summer Collection -- an assembly of garments based on the work of Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto.

Akris’ creative director, Albert Kriemler, was introduced to Fujimoto by photographer Iwan Baan while working on the Université Paris-Saclay. From a stance of admiration, Kriemler was thus influenced by Fujimoto’s work: "We share a vision to create an effortless relation between the body and the environment with utmost simplicity. Sou Fujimoto is an architect who understands that we have more senses than just the eye," said Kriemler.

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From November 4-6, the 2015 World Architecture Festival (WAF) will take place in Suntec in central Singapore, featuring three days of conferences, exhibitions and lectures, in addition to the awards ceremony. As the world’s largest architectural festival and awards event, the WAF awards honor exceptional architecture from around the globe across 30 categories. Over 70 judges attend the festival and critique the submitted projects. Among this year’s “superjurors” are Peter Cook, Sou Fujimoto, Benedetta Tagliabue, Manuelle Gautrand, Charles Jencks, and Kerry Hill.

All entries must be submitted by May 22^nd to be considered for the WAF awards. Shortlisted projects will compete for category prizes on the first two days of the festival. On the third (and last) day, the category winners will present their projects to the “super-juries,” which will select the World Landscape, Future Project and Completed Building of the Year.

Past winners have included Zaha Hadid Architects, BIG, Snøhetta and Vo Trong Nghia. Prizes for small projects, use of wood and use of color will also be awarded.

Tokyo-based French architect and filmmaker Vincent Hecht has captured the opening of Sou Fujimoto’s polyhedral Naoshima Pavilion on the Kagawa shoreline in Japan. The inhabitable, seven-meter, white stainless steel structure is part of the 2016 Setouchi Triennale. Watch the video above for a closer look.

Now in its eighth year, the forthcoming 2015 World Architecture Festival Awards (WAF) will take place in Suntec in central Singapore following three days of intensive live presentations and judging. Following a $180 million modernisation programme, the redesigned space will host WAF’s soundproofed crit rooms, auditorium and Festival Hall Stage. Entries are now invited from architects and designers for the 2015 edition of what is described as "the biggest architectural awards programme in the world." The awards are expected to attract more than 750 entries, around half of which will be shortlisted into thirty categories. The closing date for entries is the end of May, and shortlisting will take place in early June.

This year’s 'superjurors' include Royal Gold Medallist Sir Peter Cook (UK), Sou Fujimoto (Japan), Benedetta Tagliabue (Spain), Charles Jencks (UK/US), Kerry Hill (Singapore) and Manuelle Gautrand (France).

Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung has temporarily “pulled the plug” on Sou Fujimoto’s ambitious Taiwan Tower, saying he would rather pay a penalty for breaking the contract than spend an estimated NT$15 billion to realize the “problematic” project.

The Banyan tree-inspired tower was hoped to become the “Taiwanese version of the Eiffel Tower,” as well as a model for sustainable architecture by achieving LEED Gold with its energy producing features. Its steel superstructure, which proposed to hoist a triangular section of the Taichung Gateway Park’s greenbelt 300-meters into the air, intentionally had “no obvious form” and was to be perceived as a natural phenomenon.

The Wall Street Journal has named Sou Fujimoto the “Architecture Innovator of the Year.” The 43-year-old Japanese architect, who first gained international acclaim in 2008 with the completion of the Hokkaido Children’s Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation, has been lauded by the magazine for his “future primitive” structures that are, as Fujimoto’s believes, creating opportunities to explore “more possibilities” for daily life.

“Fujimoto’s goal isn’t just to make spaces—the basic function of architecture—but to make people relate to spaces in new ways,” stated WSJ author Fred Bernstein. 

In response to Fujimoto’s selection, WSJ has published a comprehensive article about Fujimoto’s life and work. You can read the article, here.

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Over the weekend, Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto exhibited an inhabitable sculpture of stacked and suspended aluminum cubes as part of the FIAC art fair in the Parisian Jardins des Tuileries’ gardens. The installation, “Many Small Cubes” is his first project in Paris and was commissioned by the Philippe Gravier art gallery as an exploration of nomadic structures and Sou Fujimoto’s concept of bringing architecture closer to nature.

"The floating masses of Many Small Cubes creates a new experience of space, a rhythm of flickering shadows and lights like the sun filtering through leafy trees,” described Sou Fujimoto.

Ochoalcubo (Eight-Cubed) is a pioneering project in Chile that seeks to unite leading Chilean and Japanese practices with ground-breaking architecture. The collaborative enterprise was started by Eduardo Godoy, a design impresario who began working in Chile in the 1980s and who has always been a strong advocate for innovative design and architecture in the country. For a nation that boasts more than forty individual schools of architecture, the ever growing number of professionals seems to have had a relatively small impact on Chilean cities. Faced with the seemingly infinite landscape of 'cookie-cutter housing' in the suburbs, Godoy implemented Ochoalcubo in order to provide opportunities for young professionals, alongside fostering a new kind of appreciation for the profession itself. With a large number of architects having taken part in the first stage, including Smiljan Radic (designer of the 2014 Serpentine Pavilion), the third and fourth stage of what is certainly one of the world's largest active architectural laboratories will be launched in the coming days.

See images from all sixteen proposals from third and fourth stages of the Ochoalcubo project, including those by SANAA, Sou Fujimoto, Kengo Kuma, Alejandro Aravena and Atelier Bow Wow, after the break.

Architects have always questioned what the cities of the future will look like. In the 1960s and 70s, one of the most prominent advocates of this field of "futurology" within architecture was historian and critic Michel Ragon. In an upcoming exhibition entitled City As A Vision, the FRAC Centre pays tribute to Ragon by presenting both historical and prospective urban concepts by architects throughout the last fifty years.

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