The Textures from Textiles exhibition showcases Hosoo’s various interior product lines that have been released to date. In addition, Naohisa Hosoo, the principal architect for Hosoo Flagship Store and furniture designer for this exhibition, plans to update the exhibition over time based upon his continuing architectural history research and cues from the textiles as a key to renewing “today’s architectural thoughts.”

The theme of this exhibition is “from textile to architecture” with the first volume of the series, titled “Genealogy of Construction,” which focuses on interior ornamentation, such as furniture and wallpapers, not as accessories to architecture, but as partners that “construct” our lives.

In his essay, Principle of Cladding (1898), Adolf Loos breaks down architecture into “carpets (textile)” and a “frame” and regards architecture as an extension of “cladding” derived from an enclosure created by carpets. In addition, Loos describes the carpets’ material as something that gives a sense of clarity to the space’s purpose. Loos’ theories were crucial as they recognized the superior function of space-cladding materials in architecture and had, until then, prioritized structure. Interior ornamentation using textile wallpapers reached the height of its popularity in the 19th century, thanks to the spread of the Jacquard loom. However, in the 20th century, with the rise of modernism, which pursued the purity of structural material itself, caused textile interior ornamentation that covered the architecture’s structures to vanish from the center stage of the architectural realm. Nonetheless, today’s development of textiles that allow diverse, innovative materials to be woven in encourages the creation of textiles using new materials, enabling new ways of spatial expression through interior ornamentation. This evolution of textiles offers new inspirations to the function of materials in contemporary architecture and prompts a renewed discussion about issues concerning ornamentation and interior in the history of architecture.

Hosoo has been engaged in developing cutting-edge interior collections using the Jacquard loom while utilizing the weaving technology of unsurpassed, intricately patterned textile whose history is said to spans over 1,200 years. In the Textures from Textiles exhibition, the collections that have been developed thus far are presented in a format that allows the viewers to interact with each piece directly. Moreover, for the exhibition’s spatial composition, architect Naohisa Hosoo designed the space with an interior as a stage in an attempt to reconnect the genealogy of construction to the contemporary context.