Acclaimed Japanese-American architect and former chair of architecture at Harvard University GSD, Toshiko Mori has built a career on technical research, experimental design, and pedagogical practice. In the ninth video from the Time-Space-Existence series, produced by PLANE—SITE, Mori discusses the topics of time, space, and existence as they relate to her work.

Born in Japan in 1951, Mori emigrated to the United States as a teenager and went on to graduate from the Cooper Union School of Architecture in 1976, where she became a protégé of the school's dean John Hejduk. Afterwards, Mori began her career working with modernist architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, designer of the IBM Building at 57th Street and Madison Avenue.

Toshiko Mori's portfolio includes an impressive roster of projects such as a visitor center adjacent to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Darwin Martin House in Buffalo and additions to houses by Paul Rudolph and Marcel Breuer. Recent work includes the Cambridge Headquarters for the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research and the School of Environmental Research & Technology for Brown University.

Her wide-ranging interests, including drawing, textiles and craftsmanship, influence her architectural practice, and she consistently explores materiality and its limits. In the short video, Mori ruminates on those interests, discussing the importance of drawing as a visual mode of communication and how to engage the past in architectural dialogue. Through what she calls her “fictional narratives”, Mori engages with the masters that have come before her.

Produced by PLANE—SITE, the video has been commissioned by the GAA Foundation and funded by the ECC in the run-up to the Time-Space-Existence exhibition during La Biennale di Venezia Architettura, opening May 2018 in Palazzo Bembo and Palazzo Mora. The series has already featured interviews with both prominent and emerging architects such as Arata Isozaki and Tatiana Bilbao.