Ryue Nishizawa plants 33-metre orange cone atop Japanese landfill

A 33-metre-wide orange cone now stands over a working landfill basin in Toon, Japan, designed by Ryue Nishizawa as an observation deck that opens a closed industrial site to the public.

The cone sits within Oono Development, a large recycling complex in Toon, Ehime prefecture, on Shikoku island. Nishizawa, co-founder of Tokyo studio SANAA, built it for the inaugural edition of Setouchi Art and Industry 2026, a festival of art and architecture staged across industrial sites in the region.

The structure is deliberately modest in height: four metres tall against its 33-metre diameter. That proportion was the point. The festival team said its size was intended to emulate an artificial hill.

Why orange, and why here?

The colour is a tool, not a gesture. The luminous orange finish was chosen to contrast with the blue-green hues of the landfill lining and the landscape beyond it, making the deck read as a distinct marker on the terrain.

The platform has an explicit didactic role. It encourages visitors to observe how the landscape is shaped by both nature and human activity, and to experience the processes of material circulation at the recycling plant — the daily mechanics of waste that usually stay out of sight.

How the exhibition works

The deck forms part of the Final Disposal Site exhibition, curated by Nishizawa's studio partner Kazuyo Sejima, with whom he founded SANAA in 1995.

The exhibition also includes contributions from two other studios:

• Bus stops by Shingo Masuda + Katsuhisa Otsubo
• Buses and visitor workwear by Suzuko Yamada Architects

The logistics are prescriptive. Visitors must take the designated buses to reach the site and put on the workwear once there. The festival team said this brings "visitors themselves into the composition of the landscape".

"Together, these interventions invite a closer encounter with the relationship between nature, industrial infrastructure and human activity," it added.

A decentralised museum across seven venues

The Japan Industrial Art Foundation organised the festival, inviting artists and architects to work with industrial sites across Okayama and Ehime prefectures on Shikoku. The result is what the foundation calls a "decentralised museum" spread across seven venues.

Those venues also include a salt production site, a textile factory, a shipbuilder and a battery manufacturer. The inaugural edition runs until 31 October.

"Developed through collaboration between artists and participating companies, the exhibitions offer access to industrial spaces usually closed to the public, revealing the technologies, materials and people behind everyday life," said Setouchi Art and Industry.

Japan Industrial Art Foundation director Masahiro Ito framed the ambition in generational terms. "We hope that many people, including the younger generation, will re-examine Japan's industries from a fresh perspective and discover the charm and potential hidden within them," he said.

For SANAA, the project adds to a run of recent work that includes the Taichung Green Museumbrary in Taiwan and a proposal for the National Museum of Ecuador. Whether a festival built on landfill tours can shift how a younger audience sees Japanese industry is the question the foundation will be watching until the gates close on 31 October.