12.11.2022 - 12.03.2023

Make Do With Now: New Directions in Japanese Architecture

‘Make Do With Now’ sheds light on an emerging generation of architects and urban practitioners in Japan. Largely entering professional practicefollowing the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Fukushima nuclear di-saster, this generation is developing a range of critical, ecological, and social approaches that creatively ‘make do’ – with limited resources, found  materials, and existing spaces – while seeking appropriate responses to the urgent problems of the present. Turning their backs on the traditional  image of the architect-author, these practitioners are articulating a new architectural agency in working from the periphery, exploiting gaps in the system, and occupying new roles in the process that have previously been overlooked. Through newly commissioned photographs, films, and a wide range of models, the exhibition provides a multifaceted portrait of this generation and suggests new understandings of what architecture can be – and do.

Participating architects:
403architecture [dajiba], CHAr, dot architects, GROUP, Masaaki Iwamoto / ICADA, Ishimura + Neichi, Kengo Satō / Korogaro Association, Lunch! Architects, Murayama + Kato Architecture / mtka, Maki Yoshimura / MYAO, Norihisa Kawashima / Nori Architects, Fuminori Nousaku Architects, Jumpei Nousaku Architects, Shun Takagi / Root A, Rui Itasaka / RUI Architects, SSK, Studio GROSS, Keigo Kawai / TAB, Chie Konno / t e c o, tomito architecture, Tsubame Architects, Mio Tsuneyama, Shigenori Uoya, VUILD, Suzuko Yamada

Curator: Yuma Shinohara
Films: Studio GROSS 
Photography: Go Itami
Scenography: Yusuke Seki
Exhibition Graphic Design: 75W / Tilmann S. Wendelstein

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue including detailed documenta-tion of the featured projects as well as essays by established and emerging experts on contemporary architecture in Japan:
S AM Swiss Architecture Museum, Yuma Shinohara, Andreas Ruby (HG. / EDS.): ‘Make Do With Now: New Directions In Japanese Architecture’. Christoph Merian Verlag, ISBN 978-3-85616-977-0, 320 pages, English, CHF 39.–

Photos: Tom Bisig

Exhibition flyer: here
Accompanying Program: here

The exhibition ‘Make Do With Now:
New Directions in Japanese Architecture​’
is supported by:

Exhibition Partner:
Cosentino
Schweizerisch-Japanische Gesellschaft

Partner Event Program:
LINA, the European architecture platform
Creative-Europe-Programm der Europäischen Union

 

Upcoming exhibitions

19.09.2026 - 03.01.2027

Tony Fretton: Practice

Opening: 18/9/2026, 7 PM

The S AM Swiss Architecture Museum is proud to announce PRACTICE, a retrospective exhibition of selected projects of architect Tony Fretton (b. 1945, London). He established Tony Fretton Architects in London in 1984, which ran until 2024. His published texts on architecture are numerous, and he has taught extensively, including as Chair of Interiors Buildings and Cities at the Faculty of Architecture at TU Delft, and as guest professor at GSD Harvard, ETH Zurich and EPFL Lausanne. He lives and works in London.

Fretton’s buildings and projects are presented at S AM through texts, photographs and drawings. Together, they show Fretton’s practice as continuity of reflection on the existing environment, including the social, cultural and political dimensions of the city and what lies outside it.