The second BIArch Open Lecture was delivered Yoshiharu Tsukamoto of Atelier Bow-Wow. Tsukamoto presented a sampling of his research on unique urban and architectural conditions of his native Tokyo, as well as a brief overview of Bow-Wow’s built projects. The title of the lecture was “Architectural Behaviorology”, alluding to the way buildings — just like people or climatic conditions — express certain types of “behavior” by bringing together human and environmental interactions, whether at the scale of a single building or an entire city.

Atelier Bow-Wow, which Tsukamoto co-founded with partner Momoyo Kaijima in 1992, is one of contemporary Japan’s most unique, active young architectural practices. Bow-Wow’s body of work covers books that chart informal urbanisms inTokyo, dog-shaped chairs, houses built to fit on tiny irregular plots, and portable infrastructures for “micro-public-spaces”. Atelier Bow-Wow's observations on the peculiar urban conditions of Tokyo have influenced the majority of their built projects, from the small houses in Japan to various largerscale projects abroad. Some of their most remarkable buildings, like their own Tokyo house-atelier or the Garden for Pony project, are prefect examples of Bow-Wow’s heightened sensibility towards the living context of a building.