048 FOCUS
Below In her Forest of Numbers installation, Emmanuelle Moureaux invites viewers to engage with numbers through colour
Opposite page, clockwise Inspired by the bright and colourful Tokyo cityscape, Moureaux brings her Japanese experience to create her own ‘Shikiri’ concept of creating space with colours
THEY SAY that travel broadens the mind, but for Emmanuelle Moureaux, a trip to Tokyo as a student architect in her mid-20s was profoundly life-changing. ‘When I saw the cityscape of Tokyo for the first time when I was student, it was as if I saw colours for the first time,’ she explains. ‘Tousands of colours seemed to be floating in the cityscape, as layers, as three-dimensional elements. It was so beautiful! I felt such a lot of emotions that in the first two hours I was in Tokyo, I decided to move there.’
Moureaux was a student at ENSAP School of Architecture in Bourdeaux when she made her eye-opening trip to Japan’s capital city – and while her instant decision to move to Japan may have seemed rash, she didn’t waver in her feelings that this was where she needed to be to fully develop her work. A year later, after completing her studies, she did exactly what she had promised, and moved to Tokyo to immerse herself in colour.
Profile
For architect and artist Emmanuelle Moureaux, colour is so much more than a surface finish or a decoration – it is life and emotion itself. She talks to Kay Hill about her mission to bring colour to the built environment
While Moureaux works as an architect, interior designer and product designer through the company emmanuelle moureaux architecture + design that she set up in 2003, it is her stunning series of 100 Colors art installations that have been making her a household name from Oslo to Osaka. 100 Colors is the artistic outpouring of Moureaux’s overpowering experience of Japan colours. Te very first one was created in 2013 in the Shinjuku Mitsui Building, one of Tokyo’s tallest corporate towers, as part of a council art festival. She filled the lobby of the building with hanging sails of 100 different shades of colour, and invited residents to come and find their favourite. It was an idea that grew wings, developing into an ongoing series that has graced buildings and exhibition halls around the world, including current projects in both Te Netherlands and Japan and a permanent piece in Paris.
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