Cultural Activities TOTO GALLERY・MA TOTO Publishing Bookshop TOTO
TOTO
Cultural Activities
TOTO GALLERY・MA
TOTO Publishing
BookshopTOTO
TOTO ギャラリー・間
Architecture
Gallery
JPEN
Suzuko Yamada: parallel tunes Suzuko Yamada: parallel tunes

About the Exhibition

TOTO GALLERY・MA presents “Suzuko Yamada Exhibition: parallel tunes,” the first solo exhibition by prominent architect Suzuko Yamada, whose work inspires visions of new architecture where nature, people, and objects resonate harmoniously.

The world created by Suzuko Yamada—with its unexpected, free-form design and bold composition, striking use of color, and creations and installations brimming with vitality—sparks our imagination and breathes fresh life into architecture. She received numerous awards, including the 3rd Architectural Design Association of Nippon Grand Prize for her own residence “daita2019.” For the EXPO 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan, she designed a rest area that created an environment where clusters of trees and man-made structures blended seamlessly. Recently, she has been expanding her scope of activities, notably by successfully realizing a tourist ranch renewal project and winning the first prize in a public library proposal competition.

Read more

Yamada, whose mother is a wildlife documentary director, grew up observing creatures thriving resiliently in the wild from a young age. Yamada's roots lie in a land where countless songs sung by diverse life forms echo through an eternal time of ever-changing landscapes.

“I want to create architecture that evokes countless songs resonating simultaneously,” says Yamada. The architecture she envisions is not one of ordered melodic beauty, but rather a polyphonic (multiple-voice) existence—noisy and bustling—where individual elements assert their presence, collide, and reverberate with one another, generating new harmonies. Yamada views today's increasingly complex world as polyphonic and embraces it, striving to create vibrant, dynamic environments.

This exhibition perceives the gallery space as an environment, expressing the architect's unique world in which nature, living things, and landscapes resonate as they sing complex melodies. We look forward to your visit.

TOTO GALLERY・MA

Message from the Exhibitor

parallel tunes

A visitor once told me that “daita2019” felt like listening to multiple songs at once. The staircase zigzagging through the atrium, the bookshelves branching across floors, the long curtains hanging everywhere—look closely and you notice each of them watching the others, moving in response, shaping moments of daily life in its own rhythm.

Things possess a frankness, an innate way of being̶soft, intermittent, taut, heavy. Stretched and compressed by mechanics, function, and the relations between neighbours, they generate overlapping melodies. What rises is not a frame prescribing the space, but this varied set of songs—surfacing, colliding, running alongside one another. It is a noisy, vividly alive world. Around us, countless unique and unbalanced things already wriggle beyond the reach of a single rule. Rather than a symphony striving for harmony, I want to draw the world as polyphony—where chords and dissonances sound at the same time.

To reach towards such a world, I draw. I sketch patterns, give them contours, and layer new patterns on top. I break forms open and set them into exchange with others, seeking fresh movement. Through making architecture, I continue to search for ways to enter into this colourful, clamorous world.

Suzuko Yamada

Exhibitor Profile

© Fujii Yui
Suzuko Yamada

Born in Tokyo in 1984. Founder of Suzuko Yamada Architects. While studying landscape design, she developed an interest in architecture and joined Sou Fujimoto Architects. Later, she completed graduate studies in architecture at Tokyo University of the Arts. While attending graduate school, she won the First Prize in the “Arts & Life: Where will we live tomorrow?” exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. After establishing her own practice, she has been expanding the boundaries of architecture through projects such as residences “daita2019” and “miyazaki,” as well as art installations such as “outline bar.”
Recently, she has undertaken projects for public spaces, including “the expo'25 rest area 3,” and the “Yabu City Community Plaza YB park.”
Her major awards include the Award of Architectural Design Association of Nippon, 1st Prize, the Yoshioka Prize, 2020, the Under 35 Architects Exhibition 2020 Gold Medal, and the Kazuhiro Kojima Award, 2023.

Images from the Exhibition

Entrance
© Nacása & Partners Inc.
GALLERY 1 (3F) view
© Nacása & Partners Inc.
GALLERY 1 (3F) view: 1/5 scale models and large drawings
© Nacása & Partners Inc.
Courtyard view
© Nacása & Partners Inc.
Model of the “expo'25 rest area 3” on display in the courtyard
© Nacása & Partners Inc.
GALLERY 2 (4F) view
© Nacása & Partners Inc.
GALLERY 2 (4F) view: Four Immersive video works
© Nacása & Partners Inc.

Major Works

miyazaki(Tokyo, 2022)
© Rumi Ando
nu:kuju(Oita, 2025)
© Yosuke Ohtake
daita2019(Tokyo, 2019)
© Kei Sasaki
outline bar(Tokyo, 2023)
© Kei Murata

Exhibition Guide by Suzuko Yamada

Lecture

Suzuko Yamada lecture: parallel tunes

Register Here
Date/Time Friday, May 29, 2026 at 19:00 (event scheduled to end at 20:30)
Venue Iino Hall (4F Iino Bldg., 2-1-1 Uchisaiwaicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo)
Seats 500 seats / Free admission
Languages Japanese
How to Attend Free admission. Prior registration required during the registration period from the TOTO GALLERY·MA website.
Registration Period Wednesday, May 25 – Sunday, May 17, 2026 If demand exceeds capacity, attendees will be selected by lottery.
Registrants will be notified of lottery results by Friday, May 22.

*This event will be in Japanese only.

Exhibition Information

Title Suzuko Yamada: parallel tunes
Dates Thursday, April 16, 2026 -Sunday, July 12, 2026
Hours 11:00–18:00
Closed Mondays, public holidays, May 4 to 6,exception: Sunday, May 3 (public holiday)
Admission Free
Venue TOTO GALLERY·MA
Organization TOTO GALLERY·MA
Planning TOTO GALLERY·MA Planning and Management Committee
Special Advisor Tadao Ando
Members Momoyo Kaijima / Akihisa Hirata / Seng Kuan / Tsuyoshi Tane
Support Tokyo Society of Architects & Building Engineers / Tokyo Association of Architectural Firms / The Japan Institute of Architects Kanto-Koshinetsu Chapter / Architectural Institute of Japan Kanto Chapter / Japan Federation of Architects & Building Engineers Associations
Cooperation NIPPON FILING Co., LTD / TANAKA HITOSHI FOUNDATION / OKAMURA CORPORATION / Souzou-Kei Real Estate, Inc / TAIYO KOGYO CORPORATION / SHIMA Co., Ltd. / HOKUSEI INDUSTRY CO., LTD / Arakawa & Co., Ltd. / LUFTZUG / Artifact Ltd.

〒107-0062 東京都港区南青山1-24-3 TOTO乃木坂ビル3F
東京メトロ千代田線乃木坂駅3番出口徒歩1分

SNS