TOTO GALLERY·MA will be holding an exhibition featuring an urban research project conducted by architect Kumiko Inui and her students in the Tokyo University of the Arts Inui Lab.

In recent years, in addition to participating in the Home-for-All project in Rikuzentakata (2012), Inui has been working on a redevelopment project for the area around Nobeoka Station in Miyazaki and school building projects in Shichigahama, Miyagi and Kamaishi, Iwate. While investigating how to create these public places where many people gather, Inui once again recognized as a planner the diversity of the Japanese landscape and developed an interest in identifying the appeal of places to which people are naturally drawn. This is what led her to initiate this research project.

This exhibition, titled "little spaces", places its focus on the research materials that Inui, her students, and her staff members have gathered up to this date through their day-to-day investigations. Through continuing to take photographs of scenes they encountered across a period of over half a year in more than 200 municipalities in 45 prefectures, they have collected a total of over 18,000 photographs that they have categorized typologically to identify and analyze the various points of view from which the photographs were taken.

A selection of approximately 2,000 of these photographs, which were filtered by the keyword "service" that was extracted from the categorization process, will be shown in the galleries through a format consisting of 178 categorical units.

We hope that the great number of photographs will offer visitors with hints for thinking about the way in which architecture should be made in the days ahead of us.