Form and Influence

Spring 2021

Photography: Jihun Kang

Artists and designers of the Modernist Era focused on generating a new vernacular based on the energy of the machine age, resulting in a new landscape in Europe that would soon be replicated across the globe. This new movement drew influence from the sensibility found in Japanese architecture and art from the early Edo to Meiji era. Though many Modernist designers have credited their Japanese roots, many still remain uncredited. Direct ties to Japan can be found in the Modernist principles in design, along with the formal aspects. Form and Influence, the exhibition, attempts to shed light on these connections of Modernist design and their Japanese origin. 

To provide a clear visual representation of the exhibition, a quarter-scale model was built to visualize the relationships between the objects and the impact of those arrangements on the narrative of the show. Working in three dimensions in conjunction with digital curation provided an insight into how the audience may interact and react to such a space. The strategy in regard to educating the audience on the possible origins of Modernist architecture to Japanese art relies on showcasing the formal and thematic similarities. This is done through the exhibit in a handful of ways but primarily through the Modernist objects displayed in close proximity to their Japanese counterparts. 

These spaces are designed to be intimate in scale to provide audiences with individual stories for each material exploration and the furniture that corresponds to it. Creating these vignettes helped to distribute the mass of space that is the third-floor gallery. These groupings ultimately broke the vast space down to provide audiences with separate sections to move through. Working with tangible three-dimensional models was crucial to this visualization and was extremely helpful in planning the flow and experience audiences would engage with in the space.