Toshiki Hirano

Very proud to share these London Design Biennale 2025 @londondesignbiennale photos of the SEKISUI HOUSE – KUMA LAB’s ‘Paper Clouds: Materiality in Empty Space’ curated by @clarefarrowstudio , now open in The Nelson Stair of @somersethouse AND to announce that @forbes has this morning named Japan “the best pavilion at this year’s London Design Biennale … an ethereal delight, featuring suspended clouds and a dress made of Japanese washi paper with stone speakers [@mineral.sound ] constructed from 350-million-year-old fossils that play new music by violinist-composer Midori Komachi [@midori_komachi ]”. We are thrilled to see it photographed in so many different, beautiful ways – thank you for sharing your own images! – and capturing the interplay between materials, surface reflections, textures, weight, movement and lightness. The stunning lighting by Ed Elbourne and Sam Porter-Frakes of @arup has added more theatre and a magical presence, with Midori’s washi dress enhanced by Mikimoto pearls. More details and the creative process behind it to follow! Designed by @ut_iaep led by Toshiki Hirano @artitec and structural designer Yoshihiro Fukushima (The University of Tokyo), in collaboration with violinist-composer @midori_komachi and in partnership with @londonmusicfund , the project is curated by @clarefarrowstudio and sponsored by @official_mikimoto and @mineral.sound . Supported using public funding by @aceagrams , with further support by @eepee_elbourne (Lighting) for @arupgroup , @awagami_factory (Technical Support), JSPS Kakenhi Grant, POLA Art Foundation, The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and The Hinrichsen Foundation. Photographs by Toshiki Hirano (01-07,09) and Mayumi Hirata (08) @mayumi_hirata_photo

"The Garden of Excess" by The University of Tokyo Hirano Studio, at Harakado 4th floor until March 23rd.

Roppongi Texture is an art installation designed by assemblage of photogrammetry scanned elements found in Roppongi, and fabricated by papier-mache technique combined with CNC milling. The 2 meter high dome structure was made from washi paper which allowed the structure to become thin(0.3~1mm) and lightweight(6kg). Roppongi Texture is a further exploration into the possibilities of new materiality and aesthetics emerged by combining digital technologies and traditional craftsmanship that initiated in Reinventing Texture for Japan pavilion at London Design Biennale 2021 @londondesignbiennale curated by Clare Farrow @clarefarrowstudio . Now on display at Tokyo Midtown @tokyomidtown_official until Nov. 6th. Washi paper supplied by @awagamifactory_jp CNC milling by I'll corporation Production support by Erika Aoki, Satoru Kazamatsuri, Teruyoshi Kaneko, Nana Kabayama, Mone Kitazato.

“Your Hakoniwa” is a part of “A Hakoniwa Plan for Tokyo” at WHAT MUSEUM Exhibition “Corrugated / Coral.” Drawing on Surrealist automatic writing, which sought to reach the collective unconscious beyond the individual, and Arata Isozaki’s Incubation Process / Joint Core System, in which anonymous participants collectively generate urban form, this project invites each visitor to make a hakoniwa (sandbox) as an expression of individual obsession. These are periodically captured and synthesized via generative AI with the accumulated hakoniwa of all other visitors over the course of the exhibition, transforming personal unconscious expression into a collective urban vision. The aim is not AI-generated architecture, but rather to use AI, hakoniwa, materiality, and participation to sustain the pre-purposive state before architecture is subsumed by function. The synthesized hakoniwa and generated cityscapes are displayed on screen and can also be viewed on the website. On display at @what_terrada until Sep. 13.

Opening next week at @what_terrada Corrugated / Coral 2026.04.21 - 09.13

THD (Toshiki Hirano) will be participating in "Corrugated / Coral" at WHAT MUSEUM ARCHI-DEPOT @what_terrada in Tokyo, from April 21 to September 13. The exhibition approaches models not as scaled-down representations but as a medium carrying fragments of concepts and thoughts. Eight architects who emerged after 2010 present architectural thinking in its purest form through models, videos, and spatial installations. THD's work "A Hakoniwa Plan for Tokyo" explores a methodology for projecting the individual and collective unconscious and obsessions, materialized through Hakoniwa therapy techniques and generative AI, onto an urban-scale project set within Tokyo Bay. /exhibitions/corrugatedcoral/en/

As of March, I’ve been reappointed as a Project Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo. I’ll continue as Co-Director of the SEKISUI HOUSE – KUMA LAB (@ut_iaep ), and I’m also launching my own lab, welcoming undergraduate and graduate students.

Route 66, 2025.12.

Miami, 2025.12.

New Orleans, 2025.12.

Piazza d'Italia, Charles Moore.

Marfa, 2025.09.