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Kagora

2026

light, community

A close view of Kagora's crossing ribs reveals rows of blue and cyan LEDs running along the curved structure.

A woven pavilion of moving light, built as a place to gather in the woods.

Kagora glows warm gold between dark tree trunks, with mist drifting through the woodland and blue light in the foreground.

Kagora brings Japanese basket weaving to an architectural scale. Its name combines kago, Japanese for basket, with aura.

Looking through Kagora's entrance, turquoise and blue arches overlap above empty blue cushions, with pink light deeper inside.

Inspired by Hanakago flower baskets and Kagome weaving, the ribs cross overhead to define a room without closing it off. Across 120 woven tubes, more than a kilometre of LED strip carries around 32,000 individually controllable points of light. As colour moves through the weave, different curves emerge and recede, changing the space around the people sitting and lying beneath it.

A frontal view of Kagora at dusk, with pink, green and white light tracing the woven arches above visitors resting on cushions.
A close view of diagonal tubes crossing in a dense weave of pink, violet, blue and green light against the dark.
Cyan and violet ribs sweep around an opening inside Kagora, with pink light behind the curved layers.
Looking up through Kagora, multicoloured ribs weave around a tree trunk against the deep blue evening sky.
Looking up from inside Kagora, multicoloured light curves cross above visitors beneath the evening sky.
Coloured points of light glow through crossing tubes, revealing the connectors and joints holding the weave together.
A close view of blue and warm-white ribs shows the LED strips inside the translucent tubes as they bend and overlap.
Kagora in daylight: white arches surround a floor of dark mats and blue cushions in the woodland.

The build began with models, joints and tests of individual arches. A crew of collaborators prepared the diffusion for the LEDs and assembled the woven ribs among the trees. In daylight, the white structure frames the woodland; after dark, the light gives it a different presence.

Hands at a laptop showing a digital model of Kagora, with the illuminated pavilion glowing blue among the trees behind it.
An early section of Kagora glows green, pink and blue as its curved ribs are tested outdoors.
Long LED strips are laid out and illuminated on a workshop floor, with wiring gathered at their ends.

Annie Locke Scherer led the design and build. I designed the lighting, with sound by Teodor Sundström and engineering by Christian Pisano. Built with David Tollman, Rich Miller, Björn Bergenheim, Matias Peljo, Markku Leppala, Emilia Ferguson, David Correa, Max Hassler, Eero Laaksonen, Cecilia Johansson, Mar Benavides and Tomas Kronvall.

Kagora glows violet and white beyond a low stone wall, surrounded by tree trunks and blue evening light.