Souhei Imamura’s architectural sweets made by Toraya. Photograph by Souhei Imamura

Architect Souhei Imamura is always busy on several projects at once. Apart from teaching at Waseda University, he runs an architectural practice, Atelier Imamu, and collaborates with overseas architects on projects in Tokyo, most recently on a house with Felix Claus (see Blueprint March 2008). One of his more unusual collaborations has been with the Japanese confectionary company Toraya, as part of a project by Foro 08 a multidisciplinary design group.

The records of Toraya date back to 1600 when the company was established in Kyoto and supplied the traditional wagashi (confectionary) to the Imperial family. The best known variety of wagashi is perhaps yōkan, a type of jelly made from adzuki-bean paste, kanten (a type of seaweed) and sugar. Working with a master sweet-maker, Imamura came up with a design for a house-like sweet, made from thick, transparent yōkan.

Noting that architecture is about the location of human beings in space, he decided to place an air bubble in the centre of the sweet, so that when it is eaten, the familiar configuration is reversed and you ‘eat the air in the sweet’. ‘We can’t design space or air so I tried to capture the essence of air that we can eat,’ explains Imamura.

Photograph by Seiichi Nakajima

Decisions about flavour and ingredients were entirely left to the master sweet-maker who was restricted to making 10 house sweets per day for the duration of the three-day exhibition, due to the time-consuming nature of the work. Each sweet had to be consumed within two hours before the sugar began to crystallize in the air.

Toraya, which has tearooms in Tokyo, Kyoto, Paris and New York, has about 300 recipes for wagashi of which around 30 are usually in production at any one time. Varieties such as Namagashi are beautifully crafted to reflect the seasons and are made from fresh ingredients that must be eaten the same day.

The exhibition, The Shape of Japanese Sweets at the Kakiden Gallery in Shinjuku, was curated by Imamura along with four other designers from Foro 08: Rikuo Rishimori (architect and director of Foro 08, who was inspired to set up the group after working with Massimiliano Fuksas); Akira Minagawa (fashion designer); Yukio Hashimoto (interior designer), and Kei Matsushita (graphic designer). Foro 08 has its own gallery in Shirokanedai, Tokyo, from which it organises events, exhibitions and discussions about design and everyday life.