This exhibition aims to start a discussion on the effects of incomplete archives on architectural research and to appeal for greater diversity and inclusivity, as well as multiple authorship, in architectural historiography. The topic under scrutiny is the Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition (1965-2020), a long-running ideas competition based in Japan that initiated radical ideas on housing in the form of entries received from across the world. Besides fostering a local hub for knowledge exchange on this architectural competition, this exhibition is an explicit call for competition entries that have been lost but are considered crucial to making the history of the Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition more global and inclusive.

By studying the relationships between the wide range of responses to the brief created by the single judge for each edition of the competition, the exhibition aims to shift attention from the “heroic genius architect” to the valuable contribution of the “minor” voices of other architects, without whom the judge could never have propelled the debate in unforeseen directions. In this exhibition space, we invite you to draw out this collaborative knowledge and cross-cultural exchange of ideas, to engage with the inherent asymmetry at play in this competition and find ways to give much greater visibility to responses from the contestants.