石上純也｜ISHIGAMI JUNYA

Architect. Born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1974.
Completed his Master's program at Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School. Worked at Kazuyo Sejima & Associates from 2000 to 2004.
Established Junya Ishigami Architects in 2004.

Past projects include the venue design for the 'LEXUS L-finesse' exhibition at the 2005 Milan Salone. He participated in ART UNLIMITED at Art Basel, the world's largest art fair, in 2006 with 'TABLE,' a work only three millimeters thick that was selected for the 2005 Kirin Art Project. Other works include 'Table for a Restaurant' (2003), an interior for a restaurant in Ube City, Yamaguchi Prefecture. His product designs include 'low chair' and 'round table,' which are part of the Centre Pompidou's collection.

In October 2007, for the 'space for your future' exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, he displayed a massive, square balloon in the atrium space that spanned the museum's four floors. The balloon, coated in aluminum on the outside and filled with helium gas inside, seemed to express a kind of architecture unbound by land, floating freely like an airship within the enclosed space.
In November, he participated in 'Hako Exhibition,' a group show themed around boxes curated by the design/art project DEROLL at the ars gallery in Omotesando, with his work 'Little Garden.' Ishigami exhibited a round table adorned with countless small silver vessels.
The table itself became a work of art, with plant seeds, petals, and wild grasses scattered within the vessels. This evoked not only a universally understandable charm of cuteness or beauty but also an inexplicable mystery, appealing to the deeper layers of the human psyche and reflecting the anxieties latent in contemporary society.

A recent work is the design of the KAIT Workshop, a 2,000-square-meter facility for manufacturing support located within Kanagawa Institute of Technology in Atsugi City, Kanagawa Prefecture, completed in February 2008. The interior space, described by Ishigami himself as 'like a starry sky,' features countless pillars of varying thickness, shape, and texture arranged randomly, with the pillars themselves serving as the building's foundation.
This spatial composition, with its seemingly surreal concept of countless pillars filling the interior, is generating significant buzz in the architectural world regarding the freedom it might bring to a confined indoor space.
The Yohji Yamamoto NY store, a renovation project, has also recently opened.

Possessing a unique and highly sophisticated architectural expression within a global architectural language, along with his own distinct vocabulary to realize it, he is a young architect whose future endeavors are most anticipated.
His activities extend beyond the narrow confines of built architecture and convention, encompassing a wide range of fields including architecture, spatial design, interior design, and the creation of art objects.
He exhibited at the 11th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2008.

Currently, projects are underway, including 'Villa in the City,' a project featuring a house with a forest and a villa where eleven floors, each about the size of a studio apartment, are stacked; 'House in Tsukishima,' a house with a garden inside; and 'House in Aoto,' which involves creating a separate dwelling for the building owner on the rooftop of an existing building.