The exhibition Make Do With Now: New Directions in Japanese Architecture explores the ideas and projects of a new generation of Japanese architects and urban practitioners that were born between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s and who began their careers following the 2011 earthquake and the Fukushima disaster.
This is a generation that must grapple with a range of problems currently facing Japan, including a declining, graying population and an emptying countryside; the proliferation of vacant houses across the nation; profit-driven urban development, mostly without the involvement of architects; a stagnant economy; and the global climate crisis.
In response, the exhibition posits that these young architects ‘have developed critical, ecological and social engaged practices, demonstrating that it is possible to “make do” creatively by working with limited resources, existing buildings and using found materials’. And their projects, in contrast to the clean lines and minimalist spaces most recently associated with contemporary Japanese architecture, ‘pursue a different aesthetic politics that isn’t afraid to leave things rough around the edges’.
Make Do With Now: New Directions in Japanese Architecture is an exhibition of the S AM Swiss Architecture Museum, curated by Yuma Shinohara.
It closes on 5 October 2025, and takes place at the Teatro dell’architettura Mendrisio of the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), Switzerland.
