Paris, Tokyo: Emmanuelle Moureaux

In this new episode of Paris, Tokyo, we meet Emmanuelle Moureaux. This French-born architect and designer has been living and working in Tokyo for over twenty years and has made a name for herself on the global stage through her work on colours, which she introduces into unexpected places.

Her huge, rainbow-coloured 3D installations are often ephemeral and conform to the concept of ‘shikiri’ which she created herself (simply put, the idea of structuring a space using colour). In her installation ‘Color Mixing’, flower garlands, each one comprised of three different colours, can be seen from floor to ceiling.

Emmanuelle Moureaux discovered Japan in the mid-90s when she made her first trip to the country, which, until then, she only knew through Japanese literature. This trip was a revelation, and the future designer decided to settle there. She began by learning Japanese and then sat the local exam necessary to become an architect, before opening her own agency in 2003.

Now, Emmanuelle Moureaux’s multicoloured installations can be found in France (as part of a collaboration with Japanese ready-to-wear brand Uniqlo, for example) as well as Japan, where the architect collaborates with Issey Miyake among others and teaches at Tohoku University of Art.

Her ‘100 colors’ series, the idea of which is to bring one hundred colours together in one place, has been touring the world since it was first created in 2013. It has been to the streets of Buenos Aires and Dubai, to a branch of FURLA in Tokyo and to a university in America, and, since October, one of the installations that forms part of ‘100 colors’ is on display in New York.

Emmanuelle Moureaux also showcases traditional Japanese techniques in ‘One Thousand Colors Recipe’, a piece created using dyeing techniques originating from the city of Imabari.