Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata has spent four decades reconfiguring the way we move through cities and landscapes. Working with reclaimed wood, pallets, crates and discarded furniture, he builds walkways, nests, towers and shelters that, while meticulously planned, deliberately look like they’re on the edge of collapse.
In Tree Huts, his first piece in New York made in 2008, Kawamata created a series of small wooden cabins built – and appearing almost uneasily balanced – on the trees in Madison Square Park, creating a contrast between the natural world and the concrete cityscape. In Avalanche Dover Street Market, which was installed in Paris during 2024, a flood of wood spilled out of a shop interior, filling the courtyard with an abundance of wooden chairs that look like they could collapse at any minute. While some are permanently displayed, many are designed to be destroyed or reused for a project later on.
Born in Hokkaido in 1953 and now based between Tokyo and Paris, Kawamata emerged on the international stage at the 40th Venice Biennale in 1982, followed by Documenta VIII, and has since realised projects at the Serpentine Gallery in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris and Metz, MAAT in Lisbon, MACBA in Barcelona and beyond. His work sits between art, architecture and urban planning, but always returns to lived experience – like how it feels to climb three metres above a square or to walk through a forest of timber.
In 2026, that instinctive, site-led practice arrived at 4 rue des Crayères, the historic home of Maison Ruinart in Reims, as part of the champagne house’s ongoing art programme, Conversations with Nature. Founded in 1729, Ruinart is recognised as the first established Champagne house, and one whose identity is closely tied to Chardonnay and to the chalky landscape of the region. Over the last century, it has also built a distinct relationship with art, from commissioning Alphonse Mucha in 1896 to create what is considered the first advertising poster for a champagne house, to recent collaborations with artists such as Tomás Saraceno, NILS‑UDO, Eva Jospin and Marcus Coates.
Conversations with Nature is Ruinart’s ongoing curatorial programme, inviting artists to respond to the ecosystem that underpins champagne – the vines, the weather, the soil and the biodiversity – not to mention to the house’s own attempts to work more sustainably. The programme is anchored at 4 rue des Crayères in Reims, where Ruinart’s historic estate, including its UNESCO-listed chalk cellars, now integrates a growing collection of site-specific works installed across the gardens and underground spaces. The estate was further developed with the opening of a contemporary pavilion designed by Sou Fujimoto in 2024, set within a landscape redesigned by Christophe Gautrand. Within this context, Kawamata has created three permanent, in-situ works for the site: Tree Hut, Nest and Observatory.
Kawamata’s collaboration with Ruinart began with a residency in Reims in spring 2025, during which he explored the vineyards, gardens and chalk cellars, developing initial drawings and models in response to the site. The project was first unveiled publicly in February 2026 with two temporary installations at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, including a Nest built into the museum’s facade as well as a tornado of wood cascading above the internal stairway. The three permanent outdoor structures will be completed and installed at 4 rue des Crayères later in 2026.
“In the months before the launch of course we studied with his team the engineering part to ensure feasibility and safety both for the permanent installations in the Ruinart garden in Reims and also for the other exhibitions and events throughout the year including the in-situ installations for the launch at Palais de Tokyo and for the art fairs,” says Fabien Vallérian, international art and culture director at Maison Ruinart. “Recently, I had a chance to witness the installation of two large works for the launch in Paris and it is really fascinating to see him at work installing his monumental structures piece by piece with his own hands.”
Materially, the project continues Kawamata’s long-standing use of reclaimed wood and recycled elements. Conceptually, it extends his interest in architecture that feels both improvised and deeply rooted in place – and in forms that might just as easily have been made by wind, time or other species. For Ruinart, this dovetails with a commissioning approach that favours simple, natural materials and reuse. “We believe in using very simple and natural materials for artworks,” Vallérian notes. “In a similar way we use a single element from nature – grapes that become exceptional wines through our savoir‑faire. Wood, for us, is a symbol of our connection to nature and echoes our vitiforestry work in the Taissy vineyard.”
The three permanent installations at 4 rue des Crayères are conceived as a sequence that follows the visitor’s path through the estate – each intervention shifting scale and perspective.
First, Nest – a site-specific installation series – appears on the historic building’s façade, a dense, wooden accretion that feels as though it might have been built by birds or squirrels, gradually, when no one was looking. Then there is Tree Hut, a small shelter nestled high in the branches, built from the same family of reclaimed wood. Unlike many of Kawamata’s earlier Tree Huts in urban squares, this one is deliberately inaccessible. As Vallérian puts it, “The Tree Hut is a poetic but not accessible getaway for our imagination.” Observatory, with a wooden staircase and viewing platform, is the one structure visitors can fully inhabit. From the platform, the vineyard, gardens and the wider Reims landscape comes into view – the lines of vines, the changing sky, the movement of birds and insects. Fabien hopes that “visitors will climb up, feel the weather in another way, become more contemplative and start spotting birds, squirrels or clouds while enjoying the breeze.”
At its core, the collaboration is less about producing new objects than about recalibrating attention. Kawamata’s structures make visible the fragility and resilience of the environments we move through, and our own precariousness within them. When asked what he hopes visitors will experience from these installations, Vallérian says, “A sense of reconnection to nature, a better understanding of the living world and somehow a better inner balance. We also hope visitors will see and experience our deep and authentic aim to take care of our land and our planet.”