![\"sou](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/sou-fujimoto-retrospective-tokyo-architectural-forest-models-installations-designboom-01.jpg\")
all images by Tayama Tatsuyuki, courtesy of Mori Art Museum, Tokyo<\/p>\n
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The Grand Ring model centers Primordial Future Forest show<\/p>\n
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Fujimoto\u2019s signature design language, light, layered, and open, finds deep roots in the landscapes of his childhood in Hokkaido. But in the place of nostalgia, the exhibition at the Mori Art Museum<\/a> proposes the forest as a metaphor for a new kind of urbanism that is decentralized and emotionally resonant. The idea emerges most explicitly in the central installation Forest of Thoughts, a sprawling spatial archive of over 100 projects arranged like undergrowth, each a branch of the Japanese architect\u2019s<\/a> genealogy. Visitors encounter recurring themes such as \u2018open boundaries,\u2019 \u2018many, many, many,\u2019 and the \u2018amorphous,\u2019 which together challenge rigid definitions of form and function.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n At the heart of the exhibition is The Grand Ring for Expo 2025 Osaka, the architect\u2019s most ambitious project to date. A 1:5 model of the world\u2019s largest wooden structure, over four meters high, anchors the Open Circle section, supported by sketches, joinery mockups, and documentary footage. The circular form, enclosing and expanding, becomes Fujimoto\u2019s architectural metaphor for belonging in a fragmented world. This theme resonates across projects like L\u2019Arbre Blanc in Montpellier, with its leafy balconies spiraling outward like tree branches, or House of Music Hungary, which dissolves into a park as if architecture and landscape were never separate to begin with.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Architecture as Play, Experience, and Speculation<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The retrospective unfolds with inventive curatorial gestures that combine architecture, performance, and storytelling. In Stuffed Architecture Talks, nine of Fujimoto\u2019s iconic buildings take the form of plush toys, chatting with distinct personalities about their designs and contexts. Elsewhere, The Animated Forest uses projections to animate user movement through Fujimoto\u2019s buildings, shifting the focus from object to experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Perhaps most provocatively, Resonant City 2025, developed with data scientist Hiroaki Miyata, visualizes a future metropolis of interlinked spheres hovering in layered space without a center. This speculative urban vision closes the exhibition with a question: What might architecture look like if shaped by multiplicity, not hierarchy? If cities could behave like forests, open, resilient, interconnected?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Primordial Future Forest is an architecture exhibition oriented toward what lies ahead. \u2018Rather than focus on the past,\u2019 shares Fujimoto, \u2018this survey is firmly anchored in the present and looking toward the future.\u2019<\/p>\n![\"sou](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/sou-fujimoto-retrospective-tokyo-architectural-forest-models-installations-designboom-02.jpg\")
Forest of Thoughts, 2025<\/p>\n![\"sou](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/sou-fujimoto-retrospective-tokyo-architectural-forest-models-installations-designboom-03.jpg\")
the exhibition proposes the forest as a metaphor for a new kind of urbanism<\/p>\n![\"sou](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/sou-fujimoto-retrospective-tokyo-architectural-forest-models-installations-designboom-04.jpg\")
a sprawling spatial archive of over 100 projects arranged like undergrowth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sou Fujimoto retrospective lands in tokyo\u2019s mori art museum \u00a0 Until November 9th, 2025, Tokyo\u2019s Mori Art Museum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88,14484,14485,14486],"class_list":{"0":"post-15223","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-exhibition-design","14":"tag-mori-art-museum","15":"tag-sou-fujimoto"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}