Now on view at TAKANAWA GATEWAY CITY, Tokyo-based French architect, artist and designer Emmanuelle Moureaux transforms Tokyo’s Gateway Park into a portal to the next century with 100 colors no.53 “100 colors path”. This immersive installation—part of her acclaimed “100 colors” series—weaves 2,400 vertical strands in 100 meticulously curated hues, each etched with a year spanning 2025 to 2124. As visitors walk beneath this gate-like structure, they traverse a tangible future timeline, where overlapping gradients generate hypnotic moiré patterns and engraved dates flicker like ephemeral milestones.
Commissioned by JR East for the urban complex’s grand opening, the work embodies Moureaux’s signature concept of “shikiri” (literally “dividing space with color”). Layers of candy-toned lines rise skyward, creating a three-dimensional pathway that visualizes infinite choices converging toward tomorrow.
“From an endless array of colorful choices, we walk the roads that meet us in each moment,” reflects Moureaux. The central cutout invites physical engagement, allowing audiences to step inside the flow of time—a metaphor for progress amplified by the installation’s scale and chromatic intensity.
Beyond the park, Moureaux’s vision extends across Takanawa Gateway Station with graphic artworks adorning ticket gates and streetside flags. An augmented reality companion, “100 colors city”, overlays digital color fields onto the urban landscape via smartphone, while workshops encouraged participants to hunt for palettes in everyday surroundings. This multisensory approach reflects Moureaux’s two-decade fascination with Tokyo’s “overwhelming layers of color,” which inspired her move from France in 1996 and continues to fuel projects like Google’s sculptural entrances and UNIQLO’s installations.
The “100 colors” series, launched in 2013, seeks to reawavelength public consciousness to color’s emotional resonance. In “100 colors path”, the marriage of mathematical precision (equal spacing of lines) and poetic abstraction evokes both the certainty and uncertainty of the century ahead. As Moureaux notes: “Every path leads straight toward the future—even a hundred years from now.”
100 colors no.53 “100 colors path” runs through July 21, 2025 at Gateway Park, Tokyo. Explore the AR experience and workshop archives via the official project site.