Morphopoiesis, Practices of the Department of Science of Design, Musashino Art University
The exhibition sits inside the museum designed by David Chipperfield Architects. The design works with that space rather than against it, setting up a rhythm of its own through a repeating order of light-gauge steel (LGS) frames and concrete blocks.
The difficulty was in the work itself. The graduate projects from the Department of Science of Design were varied by nature—different media, different scales, different intentions—with no shared language to hold them together. Rather than force a theme onto work that resisted one, the design begins where it can: in scale. The pieces are arranged from small to large as the visitor moves inward, and the display units shift in size to meet what they hold.
Exhibition Dates: September 25 – October 19, 2025
Venue: West Bund Museum, Shanghai
Organized by: Department of Science of Design, Musashino Art University; College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University; RPDC DESIGN WEEK
Co-organized and Sponsored by: xiaohongshu
Curatorial Planning: atama.works
Exhibition Directors: Ryoji Tanaka, Kiyonori Muroga, Du Qin, Chen Peng
Graphic Design: Ryoji Tanaka
Spatial Design: Yufan Lu
From that one decision a spatial effect follows, almost on its own. Seen from the entrance, the smallest works in the foreground line up with the largest at the far end, and the exhibition flattens into a single plane. Depth is held back at the threshold and given up only in movement—the real scale of the space revealing itself step by step, as the body walks through it.
The LGS system makes this readable. Where there is a work, the steel is faced in white and becomes its ground; where there is none, it stays exposed. The two conditions—finished and structural, new and existing—are kept in plain view, neither hiding the other, and the white cladding is made to be taken down entirely once the show closes. The result quietly reverses the usual relation of body and room: it is not the visitor who moves through the exhibition, but the exhibition that draws the visitor forward.
