100 Colors, Tokyo.
A week-long trip to Tokyo as an architecture student is what gave Emmanuelle Moureaux her passion for color. “I felt a lot of emotions, seeing all these colors in the city,” she recalls. “In France, due to regulations, cities are mostly colorless.” Moureaux moved from Bordeaux to Tokyo a year later. Since establishing her firm there, her signature rainbow palette has enlivened such Projects as four Sugamo Shinkin Bank branches and two Issey Miyake pop-up shops. “I use colors as three-dimensional elements, layers to create a space rather than finishing touches,” she explains. Her recent installation 100 Colors transformed the lobby of an office tower—specifically selected as a location where the people passing through are not likely to be close followers of design or art. Visitors were asked to contemplate the suspended sheets of colored paper, then pick a favorite shade.