Encounters with Kazuo Shinohara’s Umbrella House

Built in Tokyo in 1961, Umbrella House is one of the smallest residential buildings designed by celebrated Japanese architect Kazuo Shinohara (1925–2006). Considered a masterpiece of his First Style, it represents a pivotal moment in Shinohara’s career before he began moving away from decorative concerns towards his search for an abstract space. It was recently saved from demolition and reconstructed on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, Germany.

Bringing together contemporary responses to Umbrella House by international practitioners working across fine art, filmmaking, creative writing, architecture and calligraphy, Encounters offers timely new readings of Shinohara’s work. Foregrounding the voices and positions of women, the project expands existing technical, historical, and almost exclusively masculine narratives around one of the most influential architects of Japan’s postwar generation

A research project and publication by Michaela Nettell with: Estefania Araujo Bianchi, DEHLI GROLIMUND, Kyoko Hanawa (Emi Kawai) & Yuki Sumner, Kevin Gauld & Julie F Hill, Sawako Nakayasu, Ana Ruepp, Emily Richardson, Lera Samovich, Tomoka Shibasaki (tr. Polly Barton), Emily Speed, Mónica Verdejo Ruiz and Leigh Wells