The exhibition Built Environment: An Alternative Guide to Japan offers a unique perspective on Japan through innovative buildings, civil engineering projects, and landscape designs. Organized by the Japan Foundation and presented in collaboration with the Consulate General of Japan in Montreal, this traveling exhibition explores the resilience of Japanese architecture and infrastructure in the face of natural disasters and climate change.

The exhibition is curated by Shunsuke Kurakata (Associate professor, Osaka City University), Satoshi Hachima (Professor, Chiba Institute of Technology), and Kenjiro Hosaka (Curator, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo).

A selection of 80 projects from Japan’s 47 prefectures, including works by renowned architects

Japan is a geographically diverse country—an archipelago stretching from north to south, with most regions experiencing four distinct seasons. Yet this varied landscape also brings challenges: the country is frequently struck by natural disasters such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and typhoons. Across Japan, remarkable buildings and structures demonstrate a profound capacity to adapt to an often extreme natural environment.

Through photographs, texts, and videos, the exhibition presents 80 projects from all 47 Japanese prefectures, spanning from the late 19th century to the present day. The goal is to underline how Japan’s built environment interacts with the natural world while maintaining a sense of local identity.

By adopting the perspective of the “built environment”, which highlights the interaction between architecture, civil engineering, and landscape design, the exhibition proposes a new way of understanding the Japanese territory. The curators thus offer an alternative guide to the country, providing audiences with a deeper understanding of Japanese history, environment, and culture.

“This exhibition and the projects it showcases provide many inspiring examples that can help us in Quebec rethink our own built environment and its resilience to climate change and natural disasters. There is much to learn from Japanese architecture and construction, which for thousands of years have evolved to adapt to and withstand extreme environmental forces. The exhibition is presented at UQAM’s Centre de design in its world premiere in French, as part of our mission to host international exhibitions that foster cultural exchange,” said Patrick Evans, Director of UQAM’s Centre de design.

Several of the projects were created by world-renowned architects and designers, including Shigeru Ban (2014 Pritzker Prize laureate), Kengo Kuma (known for combining Japanese tradition with natural materials), Yoshio Taniguchi (designer of New York’s MoMA renovation), Isamu Noguchi (celebrated designer and sculptor merging art and design) and Arata Isozaki (2019 Pritzker Prize laureate).

Exhibition Design: A Bird’s-Eye View of the Archipelago

The 80 projects are displayed on structures reminiscent of origami—folded, angular, and sometimes cubical forms made of plywood, delicately arranged on the floor of the main exhibition hall. Their layout evokes a stylized map of the Japanese archipelago and its four main islands: Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu. A series of video projections enhances the immersive experience.

Events Related to the Exhibition

Roundtable Discussion: The Resilience of the Built Environment

A roundtable on the resilience of the built environment—both in Quebec and Japan—will be held in collaboration with UQAM’s Pôle sur la ville résiliente, a research group uniting around 40 scholars from various disciplines.

When: Wednesday, January 21, 2026, at 2 p.m.
Where: UQAM’s Centre de design

“One of the main themes of the exhibition is that buildings and built environments can be designed to better withstand natural hazards and the impacts of climate change. In this sense, the exhibition resonates with the work of UQAM’s Pôle sur la ville résiliente, which brings together about 40 researchers, including several professors from UQAM’s École de design,” said Patrick Evans, Director of UQAM’s Centre de design.

Student Exhibition

When: November 25, 2025

Starting November 25, 2025, the UQAM’s Centre de design lobby will host a new exhibition dedicated to Metabolism, a major Japanese architectural movement from the 1960s and 1970s. It features twenty wooden models illustrating iconic postwar Japanese buildings and structures. The project was led by Professor Patrick Evans as part of a studio course for undergraduate students in UQAM’s Environmental Design program.

Born in postwar Japan in the early 1960s, Metabolism is a design and architectural movement that envisions the built environment as a living organism in constant interaction with its natural and technological surroundings. Deeply forward-looking, it also draws on traditional Japanese ideas of impermanence, modularity, community, and harmony with nature. These principles were combined with modern concepts of connectivity and material innovation. The resulting designs—at once utopian and traditional—were often spectacular, sometimes extravagant, but always fascinating.

Sixty years after its emergence, the movement’s influence remains strong, inspiring new approaches to organic growth, collective forms, and high density living, while fostering an integrated ecological vision of architecture.

The students and their professor will also hold a public seminar on Metabolism every Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. in the Centre de design during November and December 2025.