Moreau Kusunoki, the acclaimed Franco-Japanese architecture studio, invites visitors to explore its delicate yet profound visual language at Fragments, an exhibition at the Yvon Lambert gallery in Paris. Conceived in parallel with the release of the studio’s inaugural eponymous book, the show reveals the intimate mechanics of their creative process through more than fifteen years of hand drawings by Hiroko Kusunoki.

At Moreau Kusunoki, drawing is employed as a recursive process of contemplation and discovery, intended not to define but to reveal. In their monochrome language, these works offer glimpses into the studio’s architectural thinking, where intuition and precision coexist with the unknown. Spaces and scenarios are not merely designed, but gradually reveal themselves as the drawing accompanies the project’s development. Each line, each hesitation, bears witness to a moment of discovery, where visions and ideas emerge and slip through the cracks.

These drawings explore the project and deliberately leave some elements open-ended, allowing future users to make them their own and transform them. They serve as a tool for reflection for the architect, the viewer and the user alike. In this sense, they become living archives of possibility, embodying the belief that a design is never truly complete until it is inhabited and evolves through time.

The exhibition stands as a testament to the architectural hand drawing’s power as a medium of empathy and inquiry, where hand and mind collaborate to reveal what cannot be quantified or articulated.

ABOUT MOREAU KUSUNOKI

Moreau Kusunoki is an architecture studio established in Paris in 2011 by Nicolas Moreau and Hiroko Kusunoki. The practice is founded on a shared passion for the infinitesimal from Japan and the Western ideologies of urbanism. The studio’s fundamental approach is to maintain an undefined space, an all-capable in-between, which empowers future users to activate and appropriate it, ensuring the projects’ relevance and value through time. Notable works include the Guggenheim Helsinki (2015), the Powerhouse Parramatta Museum in Sydney (2019–2026), and the ongoing cultural renovation of the Centre Pompidou in Paris (2024–2030).