Dominique Perrault: Urban Landscape[Exhibition]|Tokyo Operacity Art Gallery

The city as landscape

Believing that architectural works must not be created without linking them to various aspects of the surroundings, Perrault sees the city as a large landscape. In an urban context, the term 'landscape' is often interpreted in terms of landscaping parks and areas of greenery, but the word originally indicated the city itself, composed of a variety of elements such as culture, geography, and history. The thinking that lies at the essence of Perrault's works is how to best enrich the city through the construction of a new architectural intervention that becomes part of the landscape.
Section 2 studies the aims of Perrault's architecture from the perspective of five themes—Urban Geographies, Periphery of Nature, Discovery of Places, Skyline as Landscape, and Transformation of Geographies. Categorized under these five themes, the section examines 20 projects through study models, which reveal the architect's thought process, through site models, which allow observation of the relationship between the architecture and the site, and through samples of materials and drawings. The entire exhibition space becomes a landscape, giving visitors a feel for Perrault's thinking on cities.

Ewha Campas Center, Seoul 2004-2008
© André Morin /DPA/ADAGP