Lærke Rydal Jørgensen – författare

The second volume in the Architecture Connecting series explores the pivotal role the human narra- tive plays in shaping the spaces of tomorrow. Centered on the relationship between architecture and concepts from the fields of anthropology, archaeology and geology, this publication presents the practice of two studios that delve into the past with both precise interventions and broad archaeo- logical investigation. The studios DnA_Design and Architecture, based in Beijing, and Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects, based in Tokyo and Paris, create work that is based on excavations of memories, narratives and knowledge about the specific place. The two studios showcase how architecture can create solutions that benefit the present by forming a bridge between past and future.

DnA _Design and Architecture was founded by Xu Tiantian. She has received numerous awards and has built a number of projects, such as the Songzhuang Art Center and the Ordos Art Museum. In the past years she has been engaged extensively in the rural revitalizing process in Songyang and Zhejiang Province. Her groundbreaking “architectural acupuncture” is a holistic approach to the social and economic revitalisation of rural China and has been selected by UN-Habitat as the case study of Inspiring Practice on Urban-Rural Linkages.

ATTA – Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects is a Paris-based international architecture atelier founded by Tsuyoshi Tane. ATTA collaborates with a team of architects and designers across a broad spectrum of projects – from urban planning and architecture to exhibition design – spanning diverse geographies and cultural contexts. Major works include the Estonian National Museum and the Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art. Central to ATTA’s practice is the concept of “Archaeology of the Future,” an approach that explores the memory, culture and anthropology inherent to the specificity of each site.

Kusama's delicate drawings both illustrate and interpret Hans Christian Andersen's tale

Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Little Mermaid” (1839), a story about a girl from the sea who followed her dreams and suffered a disastrous fate on land, is known all over the world (particularly in its animated incarnation). But the familiar story is brought to new life in this gorgeous edition, a collaboration between the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and artist Yayoi Kusama.

Paired with Hans Christian Andersen’s original text, the densely patterned, undulating line drawings of Kusama’s Love Forever series (2004–7) conjure up storms in the roiling waves of the ocean, the Little Mermaid’s vast underwater kingdom and her longing to live in the human world. Kusama’s fertile, endlessly repeating forms are an ideal match for the poetic and disturbing universe evoked in the fairy tale; the result is a true collaboration. Kusama’s drawings both illustrate and interpret Andersen’s story, bringing it to terrifying life, and Andersen’s words lend narrative content to Kusama’s landscapes of unblinking eyes, curling tendrils and disembodied profiles.

Yayoi Kusama (born 1929) first left Japan at the age of 28, landing in late 1950s New York. Her oeuvre, now spanning more than 50 years, includes painting, performance, installations and environments, sculpture, film, fashion, design and literary work. She was recently named the world’s most popular artist, based on annual figures reported by The Art Newspaper for global museum attendance in 2014.