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Kazunari Sakamoto, born 1943, is one of Japan's most important housing architects. In the Architekturmuseum der TU München in the Pinakothek der Moderne, Sakamoto's work will be presented for the first time in Europe in a large-scale exhibition in cooperation with the Deutscher Werkbund Bayern e.V. and The Japan Foundation. The exhibition will include 18 models for residential buildings, 20 large-format photos, as well as plans and projections.
Recipient of the »Togo Murano Award« and the »Architectural Institute of Japan Award«, the architect, Kazuo Sinohara's successor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, has been exploring the seemingly 'obvious' for 35 years. Discovering beauty in everydayness is a theme central to the Buddhist aesthetic, which has found expression in a very exceptional way in Japan.
Sakamoto's residential buildings are the realization of a "thus far unnoticed independent world within the depths of everydayness." These are multi-layered constructions that do not, in contrast to Tadao Ando's flawless exposed concrete surfaces, comply with classical aesthetic concepts. The edifices are pragmatic and at the same time planned with great precision: Seemingly unsophisticated, raw or imperfect, they are committed only to their actual surroundings. And yet they point to central questions about our individual and social standards. With tremendous unity, Sakamoto has been able to achieve spatial openness beyond mere transparency: The great variety of possibilities and perspectives allowed for through these structures shapes their meaning for the future.
As a teacher, Kazunari Sakamoto has been having a major impact on Tokyo's latest generation of architects. His applied work has, moreover, been accompanied for a long time by a discourse with the philosopher Koji Taki about architecture.
