Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto in collaboration with mixed reality studio Tin Drum, have created an innovative new installation, Medusa, inside the The Raphael Court at the Victoria & Albert Museum, during the 19th annual, London Design Festival 2021. Medusa is an architecture installation in a Mixed Reality medium, examining the interrelation of nature and art, creating an installation that merges real life with a virtual world.

"Medusa" [Architecture + Reality (A+R)] was an immersive proposal where visitors to put on special headsets and navigate around an organic-shaped structure that morphs and evolves in response to movement.

Medusa was on view inside the V&A from september 18–26, 2021.
Tin Drum produces Mixed Reality content, a similar experience to what Augmented Reality delivers, but through an emerging class of see-through display devices, blending a uniquely dimensional form with the real world.

The audience dons a headset to view content that is presented in their space. Sou Fujimoto and Tin Drum performances connect people and stories in ways that go beyond anything that has ever been possible in traditional mediums, enabling richer, deeper experiences.

With storytelling no longer bound by traditional “flat screen” media, Tin Drum is introducing a new way to experience Fujimoto’s iconic interchange of nature and architecture by invoking a collective human experience set to take its audience on a journey of self-exploration. Inspired in part by the aurora borealis and underwater bioluminescence, Medusa’s structure changes and evolves based on the movement of its admirers, elevating audiences to become part of a mixed experience. This creates a breakthrough for individuals to follow their own emotional responses, engage in the experience, and develop a sense of agency and intimacy that was not achievable until now.

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Sou Fujimoto was born in Hokkaido, Japan on August 4, 1971. In 1994 he graduated in architecture at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Tokyo. He established his own architecture studio, the agency Sou Fujimoto Architects, in Tokyo in 2000, and since 2007 a ​​professor at Kyoto University.

He was first noticed in 2005 when he won the prestigious AR – international Architectural Review Awards in the Young architect’s category, a prize that he garnered for three consecutive years, and the Top Prize in 2006.

In 2008, he was invited to jury these very AR Awards. The same year he won the JIA (Japan Institute of Architects) prize and the highest recognition from the World Architecture Festival, in the Private House section. In 2009, the magazine Wallpaper* accorded him their Design Award.
 Sou Fujimoto published “Primitive Future” in 2008, the year’s best-selling architectural text. His architectural design, consistently searching for new forms and spaces between nature and artifice.

Sou Fujimoto became the youngest architect to design the annual summer pavilion for London’s Serpentine Gallery in 2013, and has won several awards, notably a Golden Lion for the Japan Pavilion at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale and The Wall Street Journal Architecture Innovator Award in 2014.

Photographer: David Vintiner

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Published on: September 27, 2021
Cite: "Sou Fujimoto and Tin Drum create Medusa" METALOCUS. Accessed
<http://www.metalocus.es/en/news/sou-fujimoto-and-tin-drum-create-medusa> ISSN 1139-6415
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