The Visionary

Shohei Shigematsu was scarcely two years old in 1975 and living in his native Japan when an eccentric band of thinkers and builders halfway around the world came together to form the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Over the ensuing quarter century, the Netherlands-based studio would become a major force in the field, thanks in large measure to its intellectual hetman Rem Koolhaas and his vision for a new kind of global practice, as frenetic and brash as the emerging global economy itself. By the turn of the millennium, that vision had reached Fukuoka Prefecture, where Shigematsu completed his degree at Kyushu University and promptly moved to Holland, taking a job in 1998 with the fast-growing firm.

Today, OMA has expanded into an international enterprise with offices in five countries — and Shigematsu, 50 this month, is heading up what is arguably its most influential branch.

In a spate of new and upcoming projects for big names like Dior, Tiffany & Co. and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, OMA’s New York studio demonstrates a particular attitude toward the ever-advancing technics of contemporary design: “It’s about observing social behaviors and how they’re changing, rather than just deploying technology in a very direct way,” says the architect.

Over the 17 years since he assumed leadership of the stateside branch, new frontiers in both the digital and material realms have radically transformed how architects design, execute and even think about the projects they create. Through it all, Shigematsu and his New York collaborators have grounded their approach to innovation in real-world experience, reflecting a kind of realism that seems at once very OMA and entirely different from anything that’s come before. “The way I see it, if you’re making a bento box, it’s important not just to design the box but what goes into it,” says Shigematsu. With all the novel techniques and software at its disposal (recent projects have featured everything from heat-slashing fully transparent glass to laser-cut building materials and projection-mapped exhibition images), OMA’s American studio looks to innovate from the ground up, altering the DNA of every project by splicing it with ideas pulled from the culture at large.

OMA’s brand-new expansion of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (formerly the Albright-Knox Art Gallery) shows that thinking in practice. Inaugurated only weeks ago, the Gundlach Building is situated just north of the institution’s original neoclassical structure and complements it with some 30,000 square feet of additional galleries, all contained in a mesmerizing, white-clad volume cut in irregular bevels as if by an expert jeweler. But the design is much more than that. “What we’ve seen is that museums are evolving as a typology from just being about pure spaces for art, but also places for gathering, for exchanging ideas and for community,” says Shigematsu. Alongside all that new exhibition space, the renovated museum features a suite of amenities and auxiliary features — rooms for classes and public events, and for just plain hanging out — all facing a grand public lawn, ready for seasonal outdoor parties and public installations.

The crush of Buffalonians who have flocked to the project since its debut speaks to the efficacy of OMA’s approach — and in its ongoing work, it seems determined to push the envelope further still. This month, Shigematsu was in Tokyo to oversee work on the firm’s largest Japanese project to date: the 2.5-million-square-foot Toranomon Hills Station Tower. Once again, the design began with an audacious bid to tweak the fundamental program as originally envisioned by the developer, this time placing innovation itself front and center. “It’s a kind of a mediatheque,” says Shigematsu: At the very top of the jagged, glass-clad high rise, above its 49 stories of offices, residences and retail, the architects rewrote the client’s brief to include an interactive business and exhibition hall, intended to provide visitors and occupants with unique, open-ended encounters in a high-tech environment including immersive digital displays. Complemented by rooftop and ground-level public landscapes, the installation space and conference center was an attempt to alter the staid formula of the insular multi use mega-tower, and to bring new ideas to a broader urban audience. “Technology should be integrated into the project,” says Shigematsu.