"Nest=O An Architectural Installation by Tono Mirai"
2000-06-10 until 2000-07-09
97-99 Gallery
London, , UK United Kingdom

Tono Mirai is a Japanese architect best known for his innovative installation projects in various art spaces in Tokyo. He is dedicated to creating new experimental spaces in urban contexts, which fuse modern and vernacular  materials and technology. A major concern for Mirai is the environment and Nest=O builds on the Japanese tradition of respect for nature, using unfired English clay, which will be recycled after the show.

Throughout May Mirai and his 4 person workshop crew from Tokyo, assisted by students from the Chelsea College of Art and Design, are building the structure. They can be seen at work through the open shop front window of the gallery; bending steel rods into curvilinear shapes, welding, weaving and attaching reed fences and applying mud.  

The process of creation is as fascinating as the finished piece,  attracting  passers-by to stop and watch as the crew engages in their task. The dismantling of the work, with all the careful recycling and separating of the elements, will follow after the 4 weeks’s period of the exhibition, providing yet more opportunities to observe one of the most unusual architectural projects in London.

Nest=O is the only specially commissioned architectural work in Architecture Week 2000. The project will be documented in a 97-99 publication on the mud architecture of Tono Mirai co-written by Dr.Gwendolyn Leick and the art critic Michael Archer. The launch will coincide with the Performing Architecture Symposium at the Tate Modern in November 2000,  organised by Chelsea College of Art & Design and Tate Modern.

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