Exhibition: Window Behaviorology
Windows and daylight influence our behavior. This is unfolded in the exhibition Window Behaviorology, curated by Japanese architect Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Tsukamoto Laboratory who has devoted many years to the study of windows and behavior.
The exhibition, "Window Behaviorology", presents the extensive research conducted by a group of Japanese students from Tsukamoto Laboratory at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, under the guidance of architect and professor Yoshiharu Tsukamoto.
Since 2007 Tsukamoto Laboratory has traveled the world, visiting 34 countries where they have studied hundreds of windows and behaviors around them.
The research is documented through texts, photographs and drawings in the "Window Scape" book series, consisting of four releases each with its own theme, published between 2010 and 2022:
In their research for "The Nordic Window", the students visited Finland, Sweden, and Denmark. They studied architects such as Arne Jacobsen, Jørn Utzon, Gunnar Asplund, and Alvar Aalto, focusing on their innovative approach to window design in the 20th century, a time when traditional architectural practices were being challenged by new industrial methods.
All the ‘Window Scape’ books can be explored in the exhibition ‘Window Behaviorology’, which specifically showcases the research and editorial work done for the latest book ‘The Nordic Window’.
In collaboration with professor Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, students from the Tsukamoto Laboratory have carefully selected windows from VILLUM Window Collection’s collection and analyzed them as they’ve analyzed the windows from their research. In total, eight windows from the museum's collection are on display where the student’s analysis adds a new layer and narrative focusing on behavior.
The exhibition "Window Behaviorology" can be seen and studied until February 2025.
Window Scape 1: Window Behaviorology
A “window” is a place where behaviors of natural elements such as light, wind, and heat are most concentrated in a building and therefore people’s behaviors also gather around it. The meaning of a window changes according to how these behaviors are gathered around it and as windows are built and become part of human lives, they also become part of a local culture.
This book presents findings from the research entitled “Window Behaviorology” (2007–2009) by Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto Laboratory. A collection of windows from around the world are documented together with the natural and human “behaviors” gathering in or around the windows. More than 100 windows from 28 different countries are presented with drawings and photographs of the spaces around the windows and are categorized by a “concept of window” gathered from analyzing the windows.
The book has been published in Japanese, Chinese (2011), English (2012), and Korean (2015).
Window Scape 2: Window and Streetscape Genealogy
This book presents findings from the Tokyo Institute of Technology Yoshiharu Tsukamoto Laboratory’s Windowology research on “Window and Streetscape Genealogy” (2011–2013). Building on the research compiled in “WindowScape: Window Behaviorology”, the book looks again at the “behaviors” associated with windows but focuses on streetscapes formed by buildings that line streets.
Unlike the previous volume, this book has been given a landscape format that is better suited for showing elevation photographs and drawings of entire streetscapes. Each of the different windows and streetscapes is analyzed based on the four points: “form,” “genealogy,” “regulation,” and “production.”
Window Scape 3: Window Workology
This book presents findings from the research entitled “Window Workology” (2014–2015) by Tokyo Institute of Technology Yoshiharu Tsukamoto Laboratory. It surveys the behaviors of natural elements in windows which contribute to the production process in traditional Japanese handicraft settings. The windows behave as “working windows” as they interact with the artisan in the making of crafts from pottery to salt to food processing.
As the limitations of mass production and consumption in industrial societies become apparent, there is a growing trend of people seeking self-sufficient lifestyles. With the advent of an ecological society, craftsmanship and the ways people connect with each other are being reconsidered. In light of this, the book examines the role of windows, as supporting characters that work alongside people, in sustaining and contributing to these changes.
Window Scape 4: Window Behaviorology in Nordic Architecture
This book presents findings from the research entitled “Windows Stranding the Ethnological and Industrial Society Networks” (2016–2018) by Tokyo Institute of Technology Yoshiharu Tsukamoto Laboratory. It follows the trajectory of design development in windows in the careers of 6 Nordic modernist architects from Sweden, Finland, and Denmark.
At the beginning of the 20th century, during a transitional period when architecture, which had hitherto been part of an ethnographic network, was being incorporated into a network of industrial society, Nordic architects, unable to abandon their ethnographic nature in the midst of conflicts and friction between those two networks, took on the waves of industrialization and created mystic hybrids.
The book has been published in Japanese, and English (2023).
Tsukamoto Laboratory is a study group affiliated with the Tokyo Institute of Technology, led by architect and Professor Yoshiharu Tsukamoto. Along with Momoyo Kaijima, he founded Atelier Bow-Wow in 1992, which has achieved international recognition.
The Window Research Institute is an incorporated foundation based in Tokyo. The Institute advances knowledge concerning windows and architecture, through research grants, publications, and public events. Over the past 15 years, the institute has been accumulating research findings through conducting collaborative studies with universities and researchers including Tsukamoto Laboratory.
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