PWS Shonan

An entire building's art programme — sculpture, relief, painting, glass, and living work, curated at architectural scale.

Curation

Art Direction

Artwork Comission

Placement

Service

Art Direction & Curation

Role

Curation · art direction · commissioning · placement across the building

Year

2024

Location

Fujisawa, Kanagawa

Most buildings wear their art like jewelry — added at the end, removable. At PWS 湘南 the art belongs to the architecture instead. Across lobbies, lounges, corridors, a library, and the gardens, I curated and placed a collection that runs from white organic stone sculpture to indigo cloud-reliefs, teal glass totems, and planted, water-fed installations — each chosen in medium, scale, and position for the space it completes. The work isn't any single piece; it's that dozens, across unlike media, read as one intelligence tuned to the building.

The Problem

Filling a large building with art usually produces a shopping list: good individual pieces that don't talk to each other, decoration applied to walls after the architecture is finished. PWS needed the opposite — a programme where medium, scale, and placement were decided together, so the art belonged to the building and gave each space (arrival lobby, quiet lounge, library, garden) its own register without breaking the whole.

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The Approach

Most building art is chosen piece by piece and hung at the end. I reversed the order — deciding medium, scale, and placement together with the architecture, so each work would belong to its space rather than decorate it. The governing question was never "is this a good piece?" but "does this make this room more itself?" — which is why dozens of unlike works read as one intelligence.

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The Solution

I worked as curator and art director across the entire complex — selecting and commissioning works, matching medium and scale to each space, and placing every piece so it reads as architecture rather than ornament. Signature white organic sculptures anchor arrival; reliefs and abstract painting give the lounges energy; an indigo cloud-relief series sets the rhythm of a calm corridor; teal glass totems and planted vitrines bring the garden inside; water-and-greenery installations dissolve the boundary at the edges. At this scale the discipline is restraint as much as selection — knowing which spaces should stay quiet so the ones that speak are heard.

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