With sliding screens and transformative spaces, windows in Japan are part of a long architectural tradition that affect people’s everyday environments in culturally specific ways. At Japan House London, explore how windows take on cultural significance and surprisingly shape our views of the world in an exhibition by the Tokyo-based Window Research Institute, a foundation dedicated to supporting research into windows and disseminating knowledge about them.

Curated under the direction of architect and critic Igarashi Taro, Windowology: New Architectural Views from Japan examines how windows influence our views on the environment, contemporary urban living, craftsmanship, design, architecture, and in print literature. Find out how the Japanese teahouse features many different forms of windows which diffuse the changing light within a tiny space; how manga, as reflections of everyday life, reveal our relationship with windows; how craftspeople and windows are equal partners in the manufacturing process; the function of windows as devices of environmental control and how writers and artists see windows within their works.

A special interactive, site-specific installation by artist Tsuda Michiko – using framing, mirrors, and film – seeks to distort perspectives and invites us to challenge our preconceptions.