kaleidoscopic ivy

A space designed for the “HANA SO” exhibition held by Akane Teshigahara, fourth head of the
Sogetsu school of ikebana, to commemorate its 90th anniversary.
While pieces to be exhibited are normally decided upon in advance and the space is designed to
accentuate those elements, the client proposed to reverse the approach by instead using the design
of the space as inspiration to create the ikebana pieces that would be exhibited there.
A tiered stone garden created by Isamu Noguchi would serve as the exhibition venue, and making
the most of this unique space would become an essential part of the design.
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.