In presenting this exhibition, which it supported in design and production jointly with other partner institutions on a national level, the Forum of Urbanism and Architecture cultivates the apparent paradox of going very far, all the way to Japan, to talk about what is very close to us: housing as a living space in relation to the city that surrounds it.
The curators of this exhibition take us to a Japan that they render, if not familiar, then at least surprisingly present. Experts on this country and the ways of living there, they have opened the doors, met the inhabitants, and painted a portrait of their lives in these environments shaped in their image.
The exhibition is divided into three parts: “Houses of Yesterday” documents fourteen individual houses with the value of manifestos designed between 1933 and 1984, “Houses of Tokyo” is a photographic wander through the Japanese capital, and “Houses of Today” forms the heart of the exhibition, centered around a selection of twenty recent houses chosen for their exemplarity, sometimes even their radicality.
In counterpoint to this exhibition, presented at the reception of the Forum of Urbanism and Architecture offices under the title “Tokyo Toy,” is a series of relief views of the Japanese capital captured by photographer Roberto GIOSTRA, documenting, beyond the space of the house, the very fabric of the city with which it interacts.
