Kawamata's fascination for Tokyo's urban landscape and its constant transformation soon led to the development of larger-scale installations in situ in cities in Japan and abroad.

These ephemeral installations raise questions about architecture and its permanence, and have drawn attention to social realities, such as the stark class difference apparent in large cities.

Since the 2000s, the artist's installations have taken on an increasingly ecological charge, confronting environmental disasters, such as the accumulation of waste or the aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.

After developing his painting practice for three years, Kawamata states that one day he felt unable to continue: I stared at the canvas, the frame around it.

The practice of installation in non-traditional spaces dates back to the 1960s in Japan, when artists who couldn't afford to store their art or expose their works in rental galleries regularly organized exhibitions of transient nature.

During this time, he developed a strong interest in graffiti artists and their clandestine and often anonymous practices that existed outside of the art market and museum systems.

[1]: 83 The artist has lived a globe-trotting and somewhat nomadic lifestyle, working across Japan, the United States, Canada, South America, and Europe.

[7]: 44  The artist has organized "workshops" to develop projects collectively, like in 2008 at the Ecole nationale supérieure d'architecture de Versailles, when he worked with 150 students to create the installation Gandamaison.

Art historian Mouna Mekouar likens these partitions to shōji doors, an important element in traditional Japanese architecture.

As opposed to land artists, who intervened in wide-open, natural open spaces, Matta-Clark's large-scale architectural interventions were conceived for the overdeveloped, densely packed cityscape and all of its turbulent action.

This metamorphosis was aptly described by Documenta 8 director Manfred Schneckenburger, who invited Kawamata to participate in the 1987 edition of the renowned recurring exhibition.

Kawamata decided to build an installation in and around a church in Kassel that had been bombed during the war and which remained abandoned when the city center was reconstructed: What was...astounding was the mastery with which Kawamata let this chaotic mass grow first into a filigree scaffold, then into the more compact casing, and then into the thousandfold complex of gesticulations, dynamically breaking out and thrusting high against the ruin.

[10] Upon completion, the bombed-out church appeared to be cradled by Kawamata's precarious gathering of planks, embodying fragility and determined strength all at once.

The silence and the energy of the action collided and - much more - supported each other, lending a sense of liveliness, the illusion of dynamic existence to these odd ruins.

[11]Art historian Mouna Mekouar argues that Kawamata "does not seek to define a form, to erect an architecture, or to close off a space; on the contrary, he tears down the foundations of Architectonics and interferes in the interstices so as to dig passages, to recycle time.

His Field works are structures of cardboard and plywood, loosely held together with nails or tape, and destined to fall apart as time passes.

In São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Kawamata was struck by the prevalence of favelas, shanty towns that sprawled across the city.

Art historian Mouna Mekouar argues that Kawamata's installation reveals "social disparity, the brutal cleavage between the rich and the poor".

[1]: 85  First exhibited at the galerie kamel mennour in 2011 and later at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, the artist installed a formless layer of debris that appeared to float above the gallery floor.

Art historian Caroline Cros suggests that these interventions are meant to remind the viewer that "architecture is not the privilege of humans alone", noting importantly that, like Kawamata, "animals and plants are magnificent architects that work collectively".