10th NOVEMBER 2024
Isumi, Chiba, Japan
Overlooking an organic rice field and the forest, the event includes a six-course private chef’s table lunch at the artist’s studio, plus a tour of two nearby Kominka under renovation, transformed into galleries for the event.
Over the past 15 years, Hamana has purchased numerous abandoned Kominka (folk house) with the goal of transforming them into art residencies, fostering creativity in a nearly depopulated rural area.
His renovation approach is deeply rooted in the philosophy of reusing materials from the Kominka themselves, respecting each piece as a valuable resource and discovering the profound beauty in aged materials, which he considers irreplaceable and unique.
Japan faces an increasing number of Akiya (abandoned houses), with approximately 8.46 million nationwide, expected to rise to 21 million by 2033, representing 30% of total houses. Hamana’s case serves to reflect on a possible future where people move from cities to the countryside, driven by the unsustainable stress levels of contemporary urban life.
The event challenges conventional perceptions of beauty and value, highlighting the potential for renewal and sustainability in what is often overlooked, and celebrating the harmonious life found in the rural countryside
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8th JUNE 2025
Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
Ruins are the style of our future cities
Future cities are themselves ruins
Our contemporary cities, for this reason,
Are destined to live only a fleeting moment
Give up their energy and return to inert material
All of our proposals and efforts will be buried
And once again the incubation mechanism is
reconstituted
That will be the future.
1962 Poem, Arata Isozaki, Deconstruction of prototype: `Incubation Process`
Designed by Yoji Watanabe and completed in 1972, the Gunkan Building is one of the key examples of Japanese Metabolist architecture. Rather than celebrating it as an icon, Discovering Gunkan engages the building as a witness, an architectural organism that invites questions rather than answers.
Memory, Mutation, and Modularity are the main ingredients and themes to contemplate together, serving as a starting point for new transformations.
Through a six-course dinner conceived as a spatial narration, installations and site-specific design interventions, the event seeks to become an open laboratory, a moment of conversation between guests, artists and the site itself. Food operates as a medium, translating the logic of modularity and cellular growth into culinary form. The furniture, designed specifically for the event, reflects on notions of adaptability, suspension, and support.
The artistic contribution introduces thresholds and passages, inviting the building to be read as a porous structure in conversation with different times, languages, and bodies.
Discovering Gunkan does not aim to monumentalize its site but to listen: to the architecture, to its rhythms, to its residues. It proposes slowness not as nostalgia, but as method: a way to approach the invisible, to inhabit duration, and to hold space for transformation.
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Short Documentary
VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE 2025
The dichotomy between city and countryside, urbanization and nature has been a constant throughout history, when city walls once served to protect against the external world, seen as dangerous and wild. Today, however, this relationship seems to have reversed: cities are often perceived as hostile, congested environments, while the countryside has become a refuge for many, a space to rediscover a lost sense of balance.
Akiya – The Kazunori’s Case explores this paradox through the eyes of Kazunori Hamana, a Japanese artist living in the Chiba countryside, about 60 km from Tokyo, where he started a renovation project of several ancient Kominka (traditional folk-houses). His goal is to transform them into creative spaces for young artists, providing them with low-cost studios while simultaneously preserving rural architectural heritage.
Hamana’s approach goes beyond a purely philological restoration of vernacular architecture; instead, it follows a cyclical and adaptive method influenced by Japanese culture, where complete reconstruction is often preferred over traditional restoration. His work is distinguished by a sensitive and intentional use of existing materials, enhancing their patina and memory.
Everything is reimagined in a new form: the roof’s wooden planks, blackened by centuries of smoke, become decorative partitions; scrap wood is burned to heat the water for the daily bath.
That evening bath is more than just a ritual, it is a way of inhabiting time, of giving value to what has been discarded, of reversing the relationship between center and periphery. It is not about nostalgia but about rethinking resources, economies, and the way we inhabit space, unafraid to challenge conventional notions of value and beauty.
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Her ongoing project, [Matter]iality of Memory, supported by the JREX fellowship, traces the sonic presence of sacred Ainu sites in Hokkaido. Previous work includes DUNKE-DUNK, a research initiative in coastal Norway.
Supported by The Norwegian Barents Secretariat, the project facilitated transdisciplinary exchanges around landscape, memory, and resistance.
In the duo exhibition HOMAGE, she transformed an abandoned factory into a living soundscape, using kinetic objects and experimental tools to revive sonic memories embedded in the space.
In 2022, she received a Japanese Government Scholarship for Un(mute) performance: Developing an Artistic Methodology for Ontological Instruments, which investigates the lineage of Japanese sound art (1980–2000) and its spiritual-material resonances. In 2023, she was awarded the Hirayama Ikuo Culture and Arts Award 平 山郁夫文化芸術賞 for her work bridging cultural memory and artistic experimentation.
Natalie is a graduate of The Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Her works have been exhibited internationally at Kunsthall 3,14 (Bergen), Spriten Kunsthall (Skien), Roots&Arts Shiraoi (Japan), ONA Project Room (Tokyo), Komagome SOKO (Tokyo), 3x3 Art Space (Tokyo), JCCAC (Hong Kong), and Above the Clouds Gallery (London), among others.
Her work is rooted in research and crafts, investigating design through universal emotions.
A graduate of ECAL, her nomadic practice is shaped by cultural analysis, reflecting on the long-term between industry and craft, and on creation itself and its relationship to life. Her recent projects include Semis (seeds
in French), a series of ephemeral origami that disappear to become plants, and Archaeology of the Future, a fictional portrait in silverware, both exploring the material and symbolic transformation of objects over time.
Recognised by institutions such as the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation, the French Ministry of Culture, Villa Albertine in New York, the Museum of Decorative Arts and Villa Noailles in France, she has exhibited internationally, from Milan Design Week and Tokyo to Design Miami.
She is now weaving a dialogue with Japanese manufacturers, experimenting with innovative tools to support their relevance today.
(Mug Dealer)
refining his skills in diverse culinary traditions. In Japan, he co-managed a hotel in Nagano, trained Kaiseki at Satoyama Juji and worked at Gucci Osteria in Ginza before joining 81 in Nishiazabu.
and artist in Barcelona. He opened a pizza shop in his hometown, combining food with art and later explored
street food in Italy and Australia. In Japan, gained PR and business skills within consulting, and now collaborates
with art galleries to create immersive art events through his co-founded project, Fuego.