Ninety Nine Failures, the third pavilion project by the Digital Fabrication Laboratory of the University of Tokyo, Japan seeks to pay respect to the many failures before a success in the practice of architecture. Under the initiative of Kengo Kuma and Yuseke Obuchi, the pavilion expresses a highly immersive structural, material and spatially perceptual experience. The pavilion is the outcome of the lab’s investigation of structural and material behaviours in tensigrity models.
© Hayato Wakabayashi
Tensigrity models are explorations of balancing tension and compression forces in sculptural objects.It dates back to the 1940’s and was coined by Buckminster Fuller who described it as synergetic explorations in structure and geometrical forms.
Courtesy of The University of Tokyo Digital Fabrication Lab
The tensigrity studies at the lab aim at investigating prototypical geometries to reconcile the contemporary issues of resource and material scarcity. The pavilion therefore serves as a conceptual and practical tool to generate a series of ideas rather than swiftly arrive at direct engineering solutions to these problems.
Courtesy of The University of Tokyo Digital Fabrication Lab
Obayashi Corporation, one of the project collaborators was invited to help choose a studio project for final realisation. The final choice according to studio assistant Toshiktasu Kiuchi was related to the “potential of the geometric form to be controlled and calibrated along the process of construction”.
Project info:
Architects: The University of Tokyo Digital Fabrication Lab
Country: Japan
Year: 2013
Photographs: Hayato Wakabayashi, Courtesy of The University of Tokyo Digital Fabrication Lab
Hassan Yakubu is an editor at Arch2O with a deep academic and professional background in architecture, planning, and urban infrastructure. Currently pursuing his Ph.D. at Cornell University, his editorial focus spans climate urbanism, sustainability transitions, and the intersection of infrastructure and STS. Hassan brings a sharp critical lens shaped by fieldwork in Accra and policy research across Africa. With prior experience leading pedagogical initiatives and contributing to architectural practices in Rabat and Accra, his writing brings clarity, academic depth, and a global perspective to contemporary urban issues and design thinking.