Among young Japanese architects, mindsets are shifting: Whereas in the past, the short lifespan of buildings enabled architecture to be tailored to individual clients’ desires and phases of life, today the focus is on communality, new material cultures, gradual transformation, and repairing shrinking neighborhoods. Working in the context of Japan’s population decline, this new generation of architects is leading the way towards a new aesthetic that emphasizes process and community, realigning architecture with its social role.

This turn in Japanese architecture was recently explored in the exhibition Make Do With Now: New Directions in Japanese Architecture, which was first shown in 2022 at the S AM Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel. The exhibition will now travel to the Estonian Museum of Architecture in Tallinn (January 20 to April 28, 2024), providing an opportunity to host this event in Berlin with some of this generation’s protagonists.

Presentations by Yuma Shinohara (curator of Make Do With Now, S AM Swiss Architecture Museum), Wataru Doi (dot architects), and Chie Konno (teco architects) will be followed by an in-person panel discussion. Moderation: Markus Krieger (ARCH+)

With the kind support of the Japanese Cultural Institute (The Japan Foundation).

The event will be in English.

Der Fachvortrag wird von der Architektenkammer Berlin anerkannt und mit 1 Unterrichtseinheit (1UE = 45 Minuten) bewertet.