While winter decided to take over the city of New York (as well as majority of the east coast), Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art has been preparing an activity for New Yorkers could do while indoors: "A Japanese Constellation: Toyo Ito, SANAA, and Beyond," an exhibit showcasing the work of notable Japanese architects.
According to Curbed, the exhibit will run from March 13 to July 4. "A Japanese Constellation" brings focus to Japanese architects, such as Pritzker Prize winners Toyo Ito, and Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima of SANAA.
The exhibition not only aims to showcase the grandeur in simplicity that is presented by Japanese architects through their work, but MoMA also stressed the overlying theme of the presentation. The press release states:
"'A Japanese Constellation: Toyo Ito, SANAA, and Beyond' focuses on the work of architects and designers orbiting Pritzker Prize winners Toyo Ito and SANAA. Providing an overview of Ito's career and his influence as a mentor to a new generation of Japanese architects, the exhibition offers a retrospective of recent works by three generations of internationally acclaimed designers, including Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa, Sou Fujimoto, Akihisa Hirata, and Junya Ishigami. Displaying models, drawings, and images of more than 40 architectural designs, the exhibition highlights the renewed prominence and innovation of contemporary architecture from Japan since the 1990s."
The exhibition title is very apt too - the "constellation" in particular is the recurring theme of the show: all the artworks presented in the exhibit makes use of Ito's Sendai Mediatheque building in the eponymous Japanese city.
The building is particularly notable as well: it survived the chaos resulting from the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated several parts of the country back in March 2011.
MoMA adds that since majority of the featured artists in the show also participated in the reconstruction of the areas hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake, the exhibit "will also reflect how the architecture field is responding to current societal change."
