TOTO GALLERY・MA is pleased to present "onishimaki+hyakudayuki / o+h: A Living Whole," featuring young architects onishimaki+hyakudayuki / o+h. They are involved in a wide range of projects, from public architecture to housing and welfare facilities, and have attracted attention by winning the Architectural Institute of Japan (AIJ) Prize (2023) and curating the Japan Pavilion at the International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia. 

The poet T.S. Eliot suggested the concept of poetry as "a living whole of all the poetry that has ever been written"^*1 and that while the past guides the present, the insertion of new poetry transforms the past and creates new combinations in which tradition is established.

According to Onishi and Hyakuda, creating architecture is thinking about a Living Whole, which includes the architecture itself. When they create architecture, they listen to the voices of users and community members with diverse backgrounds and characteristics and to the stories passed down in the region, carefully gathering up the activities of people and translating them into architecture. In the Shelter Inclusive Place Copal, a children's play facility for which they won the AIJ Prize (Built Work Division), the ramp is a circulation route for all people, including wheelchair users, while simultaneously serving as a playground for the children, creating a complex whole from which no single part can be extracted. Everyone can find their place in the world based on individual values and functions as a starting point, overlapping with those of others. In the same way, thinking of a Living Whole can be rephrased as an attempt to demonstrate an ideal form of a tolerant and diverse society that values the invaluableness of each being through architecture. 

This exhibition will introduce how a Living Whole of their works and people's activities emerges as an architectural landscape through models, words, and installations. We hope you will experience o+h's vision and worldview through this exhibition.