For our last full day in Tokyo, Kevin, Rowan and I visited the Mori Art Museum, located on the 54th floor of the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, where we fell in love with a special exhibit on the architecture of Sou Fujimoto.
The first exhibit room was filled with Fujimoto’s architectural ideas rendered in everything from a pile of laundry pegs, stacked staple racks, crumpled screening, folded paper, hollowed out styrofoam, and even screws driven into a block of wood. It was amazing. Next to or above the draft versions of his ideas were photos of the finished buildings or renderings of the still to-be-completed structures.
The room was exploding with ideas. The boundaries of architecture were played with and piled on each other in such innovative and creative ways. I couldn’t stop gawking at every piece.
The exhibit also had a room dedicated to one of Fujimoto’s now most famous structures, the Grand Ring of the EXPO 2025 Osaka, including a large partial replica we could walk around, and samples of his initial drawings of the Ring.
One of my favourite rooms had cute stuffy versions of several of Fujimoto’s most iconic buildings sitting on chairs around a table. A recording of a conversation between the buildings played, while the stuffies moved as if they were talking (in Japanese), with English subtitles displayed on the table. It was super, duper cute – and informative!
Near the end we found a room filled with 40 small white chairs, each containing a different book that has a connection to Fujimoto’s architecture. Visitors are meant to browse the books, while gazing out of a huge, floor to ceiling window, and see the connections extend out into the architecture of Tokyo.
We loved the whole exhibit and that it’s held in one of the top floors of a skyscraper in downtown Tokyo.
Later that afternoon, we took the subway to Grand Cinema Sunshine to see the new Fantastic Four: First Steps movie in 70mm IMAX. It’s on the 12th floor of the building and is the biggest movie theatre we’ve ever been in. It was amazing to see the film in IMAX – and in such a special theatre – and in Tokyo. After a quick bite to eat at T’s Tan Tan (one last time) and some delicious vegan ice cream on the way home, it was time for some packing and some rest for our trip home to Canada the next day.
Our four weeks in Japan were glorious and we loved every minute of them. And we’re already planning our next trip back.
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