nendo’s Installation with 2,000 Pieces of “Ivy of Mirrors” for an Ikebana School in Japan.

Prolific Japanese studio nendo has designed a space for Akane Teshigahara’s “HANA SO” exhibition, the fourth head of the Sogetsu school of Ikebana, commemorating it’s 90th anniversary.

A tiered stone garden created by Isamu Noguchi has been chosen to serve as the exhibition venue. Making the most of this unique space was the essential part of the design. Normally, the pieces for exhibitions are decided in advance, and the space is designed to accentuate those elements. But for this special occasion, the client proposed to reverse the approach by using the design of the space as an inspiration, and to create the ikebana pieces that would be exhibited there. 0.5mm thick stainless steel sheet with a mirror finish was cut into pieces shaped like collections of linked rhombuses.

Each piece was then individually fitted to overlay the stone garden in order to create an “ivy of mirrors”. The ivy would reflect the surroundings while also revealing glimpses of the texture and appearance of the stone garden beneath it, and the diffused reflections of the colours and outlines of the exhibited ikebana flowers would produce a kaleidoscopic visual effect. The addition of this extra layer between these two works – the ikebana flowers and the stone garden – would create a harmony between them, as if the flowers were gently enfolding the stone garden.

See more projects by nendo on Yellowtrace.

[Images courtesy of Nendo. Photography by Akihiro Yoshida, Takumi Ota & Kozo Sekiya.]