Ishigami Junya
石上純也
Ishigami Junya founded his prize-winning architectural firm Junya Ishigami and Associates in 2004, collapsing the ideas of boundaries within architecture to bring playful solutions to buildings and structures, harmonising the man-made and natural across the world. Ishigami’s rise to fame began in 2007 with his design of the Kanagawa Institute of Technology workshop. The open plan space features hundreds of pillars scattered around a single room like trees springing from a natural forest floor.
Ishigami’s work has spanned the globe – from designing kindergartens and rest homes in Japan, through to the Church of the Valley in China and the Park Groot Vijversberg Project in the Netherlands. In 2015 Ishigami was appointed the Kenzo Tange Design Critic at Harvard Graduate School of Design. His esteemed work and philosophy of ‘free space’ led him to become the subject of a critically acclaimed solo exhibition at the Foundation Centre Pour L’Art in 2018.
Ishigami is the designer of the Serpentine Pavilion 2019 in London.