On 29 April, French architect Nicolas Moreau and Japanese architect Hiroko Kusunoki, founding partners of the Paris-based studio Moreau Kusunoki Architects, will take part in the UIC Barcelona School of Architecture’s 2019 Foros lecture series with a lecture entitled “In-Between”. In their talk, they will look back at a career full of dualities, “between Japan and France, between the tangible and intangible, between the infinitesimal and urban scale”.

To Moreau and Kusunoki, defining identity “is an ongoing process rooted in past experiences, our own cultural duality and the plurality of our collaborations”. Their identity, they explain, is crossed with the identity of the places they design, the peculiarities of each site, what exists and everything that can be imagined.  

Nicolas Moreau and Hiroko Kusunoki began their career in Japan, where they gained extensive experience alongside a number of renowned Japanese architects; she with Shigeru Ban; he with SANAA and Kengo Kuma. They came to Paris in 2008 and in 2011 opened their own studio. In 2015, they won the competition to design the new Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki, the capital of Finland, although the local authorities ultimately voted against advancing the project.  

This year, Foros, an annual series of lectures about architecture, revolves around the title “Identities”. Its programme looks to contribute to the debate on the concept of identity in contemporary architecture, strongly marked by the present trends in globalisation. For the second straight year, the series has been organised in partnership with BBConstrumat.

Language: English

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