THE COMPASSION PROJECT (2024-ONGOING)
The Compassion Project is an ongoing research initiative exploring how spatial design and intervention can cultivate compassion, kinship, and ecological belonging in public space. Inspired by the work of Japanese-American artist duo Arakawa and Madeline Gins, the project builds upon the proposition that sensorial richness, bodily engagement and collective play can foster ethical awareness, longevity, and more compassionate ways of living.
The Compassion Project aims at testing these ideas in real-world settings through a series of temporary, site-responsive installations. Each installation invites public participation, drawing on Arakawa and Gins’ principles of procedural architecture as catalysts for renewed relationality, ecological citizenship and planetary health.
KEY PRESENTATIONS AND PUBLICATIONS
Titel
Publisher/ Venue
Medium
Link | Download
Matching & Meshing: Reciprocity as Cement
Book Chapter in P. van Sonderen (Ed.) Out of Theory. Arnhem, Netherlands: ArtEZ Press. 2025.
Architecting Life
Presentation at XXV World Congress of Philosophy: Philosophy across Boundaries, Rome, Italy. August 2024.
Biotopological Craftsmanship in the Here and Now
Book chapter in T. Kadobayashi & N. Mimura (Ed.), Art and Philosophy in the 22nd Century After Arakawa and Gins. Tokyo, Japan: Ratik. 2023.
NON TRADITIONAL RESEARCH OUTPUT
THE COMPASSION PROJECT
Team and Partners
The research is conducted in affiliation with ArtEZ professorship Theory in the Arts (NL) and the Studies of the Architectural Body Research Group at Kansai University (JP).
With special thanks to the RDF Reversible Destiny Foundation New York, the Arakawa + Gins Tokyo Office and ABRF Architectural Body Research Foundation New York.