Atelier Bow Wow at the AA, 19.1.2005
Atelier Bow-Wow is a Tokyo-based architecture firm, founded in 1992 by Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kajima. The firm is well known for its domestic and cultural architecture and its research exploring the urban conditions of micro, ad hoc architecture.
Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima established Atelier Bow-Wow in 1992 in Tokyo, researching and designing small hybrid architectural structures of a type that they have defined as pet architecture. Their Mini House won a Tokyo Architect Societys Gold Prize in 1999. Their publication Pet Architecture Guide Book encourages a reappreciation of Tokyos small buildings and neglected urban spaces, the kind often overlooked (in both senses) by contemporary architectural culture. It follows their influential book Made in Tokyo which documented what they termed the real city, those anonymous buildings which give a priority to stubborn honesty in response to their surroundings and programmatic requirements, without insisting on architectural aesthetic and form. Tsukamoto is an Associate Professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Kaijima is Assistant Professor at the University of Tsukuba Art and Design School. Both were recently Visiting Professors at Harvard GSD. Introduced by Shin Egashira.