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Floating Space | The Intersection of Architecture, Nature, & Culture

With the ever-increasing need for a symbiotic relationship between architecture and our natural environment, how do art and architecture play a critical role? Join us as we explore this question by discussing the global framework of contemporary urban planning that is grounded in the intersection of architecture, nature, and culture. This virtual panel discussion hosts guest panelists, Dr. Yasufumi Nakamori, Senior Curator of International Art (photography), Tate, London and Prof. Toshiko Mori, a distinguished Japanese architect and thought-leader in modern architectural design.

This webinar will be moderated by Portland Japanese Garden’s Aki Nakanishi, Arlene Schnitzer Curator of Culture, Art, and Education.


Guest Panelists

Toshiko Mori

Toshiko Mori, FAIA is the founding principal of Toshiko Mori Architect PLLC, and the Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD), where she served as chair of the Department of Architecture from 2002 to 2008. She was inducted to the Academy of Arts and Letters in 2020 and has been a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2016. 

Mori’s recent awards and honors include the Louis Auchincloss Prize from the Museum of the City of New York in 2020; the Tau Sigma Delta National Honor Society Gold Medal in 2016; Architectural Record’s Women in Design Leader Award in 2019; and the AIA / ASCA Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education in 2019. Nikkei Business recently listed Mori as one of 50 Japanese People Changing the World, and Newsweek Japan listed her as one of 100 Japanese People the World Respects. Her project “Thread: Artists’ Residency and Cultural Center” was awarded the AIA 2017 Institute Honor Award for Architecture and was one of the winners of the inaugural FIBRA Award for Contemporary Plant Fiber-based Architecture in 2019. This year, she published two new monographs, one with a+u magazine for their February 2020 issue and another with ArchiTangle titled “Toshiko Mori Architect: Observations.” In May 2020, her project “Fass School and Teachers’ Residence” was featured by The Guardian as one of the world’s top 10 new architecture projects. (Photo by Ralph Gibson)

Yasufumi Nakamori

Since November 2018, Dr. Yasufumi Nakamori has served as Senior Curator, International Art (Photography) at Tate, the United Kingdom, and oversees the development of Tate’s collection of photography as well as of photography exhibitions and displays at Tate Modern in London. He co-curated the current exhibition Zanele Muholi, which will be on view when Tate Modern reopens in May.

Prior to joining the Tate, Nakamori headed the department of photography and new media at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, developing new displays of photography and time-based media within the context of a global encyclopedic art museum, including staging exhibitions with Leslie Hewitt, The Propeller Group, Omer Fast, Naoya Hatakeyama and Amar Kanwar. He was also responsible for numerous key acquisitions which transformed and diversified the museum’s photography collection.

He previously served as curator of photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston from 2008 to 2016, creating ground-breaking exhibitions focusing on Japanese art and photography such as Katsura: Picturing Modernism in Japanese Architecture, Photographs by Ishimoto Yasuhiro (2010)(a recipient of the 2011 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for Smaller Museums), and For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968-1979 (2015-16). As a noted scholar of Japanese art and architecture, Nakamori has contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues and has taught graduate seminars at Hunter College, the City University of New York, and Rice University. He is a 2016 fellow of the Getty Leadership Institute, and holds a bachelor’s degree from Waseda University, a Juris Doctor from the University of Wisconsin, and a PhD in the History of Art and Visual Studies from Cornell University. (Photo by Dan Dennehy, Minneapolis Institute of Art)