Context, Form, and Light Exhibition & Ways of Seeing Architecture Lecture: William Mulvihill

Exhibition Details

Title: Context, Form, and Light

Dates: January 26, 2025 – January 29, 2025

Location: Building 55 1F, Innovation Laboratory, Waseda University, Tokyo

Context, Form and Light is a photographic exploration of the way architecture takes shape through the conditions that surround it—social, environmental, and material—and how light becomes a tool for revealing, transforming, and emotionally charging built form.

Hosted by Waseda University, the exhibition presented a curated selection of works from across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The images capture architecture not just as static objects, but as living spaces shaped by use, context, and intention. The focus lies in how functional needs give rise to expressive forms, how light articulates space, and how photography can suggest new relationships between architecture and its environment.

Alongside the exhibition, I gave a lecture titled Ways of Seeing Architecture, which invited students to look critically and intentionally at the built world. Drawing from my experience as an architectural photographer, the talk offered a framework for using photography not only as documentation, but as a way of thinking. It encouraged students to question what they see, to search for the underlying decisions behind a design, and to use the act of photographing as a means to engage more deeply with architectural ideas.

Together, the exhibition and lecture proposed that photography is not just about capturing architecture—it is a way of understanding it.