Primitive Future – Everything is circulating

When you see a Sou Fujimoto building, you know instantly who created it.

This internationally acclaimed Japanese architect has an intensely conceptual and artistic approach to architecture. His minimalist buildings conjure up a radically different world and a new life for us – a life in which architecture discovers new correlations between humankind, culture and nature. It is what Fujimoto refers to as a Primitive Future.

The exhibition Primitive Future – Everything Is Circulating features a close encounter with the revolutionary buildings of Sou Fujimoto, and with the dream of an architectural future that is so inspiring, hopeful and wonderful it makes us want to look after it.  

Step into a dream drawing

Winding its way through the exhibition is a three-dimensional ‘dream drawing’– a floor-to-ceiling manifestation of Sou Fujimoto’s philosophy.

Titled Everything is Circulating, this dream drawing consists of a 500-metre-long, hand-bent wire, hovering in space: a huge, handmade, three-dimensional design.

The playful wire line depicts a closed circuit of people, buildings, landscapes and infrastructure. It expresses an unflinchingly optimistic vision of a “primitive future” – a major correlation between natural and futuristic.  

Enter Fujimoto’s designs. Discover his distinctive works, both on film and in words and images in huge books. Sou Fujimoto even challenges visitors to create their very own utopias right in the middle of the exhibition. 

Sou Fujimoto

However offbeat and imaginative an idea may be, it is vital to believe that one day it might be realised. Such a conviction can be a powerful source of energy for great architecture. Even if it never is realised, we must not fall prey to pessimism, but stick to our belief that at some point in the future our imagination will bear fruit – somehow or other.

– Sou Fujimoto.

Sou Fujimoto (b. 1971) grew up on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, where he acquired an intense interest in nature. He went on to study architecture at Tokyo University – in Japan’s most densely populated metropolis.

This is what paved the way for Fujimoto’s design philosophy: a dynamic fusion of nature and architecture. His work features light, sculptural structures with a powerful synergy between inner and outer space.

Fujimoto’s round-the-world projects range from private residences to public institutions and exhibition pavilions. His work has received numerous awards and accolades, including a nomination in 2013 for the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize. Globally, he is regarded as one of the most influential architects of his generation.

Sou Fujimoto Architects

In 2000, he started his own architecture practice, Sou Fujimoto Architects in Tokyo. Then, in 2016, he founded Sou Fujimoto Atelier Paris in Paris, France. In the field of innovative and experimental architecture, he leads the way.

Sou Fujimoto Architects has garnered international recognition and received several awards and distinctions. The practice is particularly famous for a number of radical, minimalist housing concepts, and its global followers scour Tokyo on a crazy ‘Fujimoto hunt’.
 

^{Top photo: Iwan Baan. House N, Oita (2008). Sou Fujimoto Architects.}

^{Photo: Katsumasa Tanaka. Shiroiya Hotel, Gunma (2020). Sou Fujimoto Architects.}

^{Photo: Iwan Baan. House NA, Tokyo (2011). Sou Fujimoto Architects.}