prada mode osaka and the inujima project trace kazuyo sejima’s architecture across japan

prada mode osaka x inujima project

In Osaka’s newly opened Umekita Park, soft lines ripple across a SANAA-designed pavilion, drawing visitors to the twelfth edition of Prada Mode. This layered story of architecture and transformation brings Kazuyo Sejima’s decades-long vision for Inujima into an urban context. This is not simply a site for viewing architectural models or reflecting on theory. It is a site of convergence, where the past and future of a small island are refracted through the lens of a metropolitan installation.

Before the exhibition opened in Osaka, a smaller group traveled to Inujima itself, an island in the Seto Inland Sea where Sejima has quietly worked for nearly two decades. The Inujima Project, held from June 4th to 6th, offered a direct encounter with the material and social landscape her architecture has helped reshape. Here, a permanent new pavilion designed by Sejima and donated by Prada now stands within the Inujima Life Garden.

Prada Mode Osaka | image courtesy Prada

On Inujima, Architecture as a Way of Living

Kazuyo Sejima’s engagement with the island began in 2008, when the Fukutake Foundation invited the architect to reimagine the built environment as part of the broader Benesse Art Site Naoshima. What emerged was a long-term, evolving effort to fold architecture into the rhythms of local life. Vacant homes became art spaces. Gardens, once neglected, grew again with shared labor. Architectural interventions happened slowly, sometimes invisibly. Rather than fixing a place in time, Sejima’s approach allows it to keep shifting.

The Inujima Project, which ran from June 4th — 6th, previews this philosophy through direct experience. Visitors walked narrow paths between restored buildings, listened to music inside historic structures, and joined conversations curated by Sejima across spaces that blur thresholds between art, architecture, and everyday use. The permanent pavilion at the Life Garden continues that ethic. It is part stage, part shelter, and always open.

Prada Mode Osaka | image courtesy Prada

prada mode osaka: Translating Island to City

Where Inujima immerses, Osaka frames. From June 7th to 15th, the Prada Mode Osaka pavilion opens that island story to broader public view. Designed by SANAA, the pavilion in Umekita Park hosts an exhibition curated by Sejima, with architectural models, videos, and artifacts from the Inujima work. On June 7th, the space was a private club. From June 8th, it welcomed the public.

Workshops and conversations throughout the week extended the themes of the exhibition. These were less about highlighting individual projects than about exploring the intertwined systems — natural, social, historical — that shape how architecture takes root. A café and information center fold into the same curving forms that define the exhibition hall, creating space for rest, listening, and exchange. The park’s proximity to Osaka Station reinforces this openness. In contrast to Inujima’s remoteness, the pavilion becomes a threshold anyone can cross.

Inujima Project | image courtesy Prada

Kazuyo Sejima’s language has never been one of imposition. In Inujima, it is through restraint that her architecture becomes generous. Buildings align with existing paths. Openings invite in sea breezes. Materials respond to age and wear. Her design for the Prada pavilion in Osaka carries forward this same quality: calm, porous, intentional.

The choice to present both the Inujima Project and Prada Mode Osaka in tandem reveals a commitment from Prada to deeper cultural production, less tethered to the immediate and more aligned with architectural continuity. It also renews their collaboration with Sejima, following their earlier work together in a previous edition of Prada Mode. This year’s iteration, shaped by shared values around process and place, adds another layer to an evolving archive of architectural experimentation and care.

Inujima Project | image courtesy Prada