Imagine with Us Experiencing Art within Structures that Accentuate our own Nature
Our objective with Art Outside and In is to emphasize nature and art within public spaces, bypassing reliance on traditional museum hours or venue closures. The spaces encourage personal reflection, meditation, and a “call for silence” within each of us, inviting all to connect more deeply with art, nature, and each other.
Let us create spaces that connect us to each other, our environment, and the silence within
The project aims to create flexible, mobile structures that serve as gathering places for meditation, tea ceremonies, martial arts sessions, dance, relaxation, or even quiet communion with nature. Designed to fit harmoniously in forests, beaches, town centers, monasteries, or mountain landscapes, these sacred spaces will offer the following:
- Civic and Community Utility: These spaces can also serve cities by providing outdoor venues for local cafés or events, reviving public areas with simple, elegant structures that engage communities and enhance cultural exchange.
- Crisis Resilience and Refuge: In times of natural or human-made crises, the spaces could serve as shelters—beautiful, meditative structures offering respite for displaced individuals or relaxation zones in refugee camps, possibly in partnership with the United Nations. Their light, mobile, and easily assembled design can also be adapted for temporary housing or emergency use.
The Core of the Cube Project
In a time of crisis and disconnection, the Sacred Bamboo Cube — conceived by Nathalie Ishizuka — offers a minimalist space for stillness, clarity, and inner transformation. Rooted in the Earth element and linked to the Ocean Label, the cube invites individuals to reconnect with themselves in order to shift the world around them.
Ishizuka believes that meaningful change — including climate and societal evolution — begins with clarity in our inner worlds.
Through one-on-one retreats combining meditation, painting, and deep reflection of our personal and professional lives with physical activity (in a playful ambiance) on earth or water (when available the mental performance Olympic Sailing Coach Didier Charvet), she guides individuals to align with their earth element and inner ocean, allowing them to become catalysts for healing the outer one.
In this larger context, the 240cm x 240cm cube, conceived by Nathalie is built. She does so with a top team, the the insight of bamboo master Marc Symons (Bamboe België) and in conjunction with the photographer and sound engineer Stef Van Ansloy and the Japanese architectural student Erika Kumada.
Nathalie from the time of her work with the tsunami, earthquake and nuclear incident in 2011 has always incorporated in all of her projects a youth. This time she is incorporating collaboration with the Japanese poetic student in architecture, Erika Kumada, to ensure that the process of creation is in the spirit of the tea ceremony, building to the climax the vision of art within and without. The cube is light, portable, child-constructible, and grounded in the vibration of Earth. This minimalist cube invites stillness, presence, and responsibility. Within its sacred space, art and silence awaken transformation — from the inside out.
The cube is the element Earth, our inner stability, the Mt. Fuji that resides within each of us and can help stabilize us when the outside world becomes overwhelming and chaotic. The viewer in Nathalie’s exposition will step within this cube, to experience her art and ground themselves in their inner world.
Ishizuka wants us to also experience and transform the tulmutous inner ocean — our emotions and consciousness — inside us that shapes the health of the outer ocean. Unless we tend to and transform these inner waters, we remain powerless to create meaningful change in the constantly changing world around us. The cube helps us to do so on solid ground.
Why the Cube? Coastal Cities to Experience Cube First?
In an increasingly chaotic world, spaces of stillness are needed more than ever. The bamboo cube acts not as shelter, but as a symbol and invitation — a portable architecture of presence of inner stability and in a chaotic outer world.
It reflects the Earth element and is inspired by sacred universal forms. As cities along the coast face rising environmental pressures, the cube offers a space to slow down, connect, and reimagine what is possible — both internally and externally.
Whether situated in Villefranche’s visionary ocean pole, a public square, or the Asian Arts Museum in Nice, the cube becomes a still eye in the storm.
A Structure with Intention
The 240cm x 240cm represents not a personal boundary, but a zone of influence —
the sacred radius around us that we can cleanse, inhabit, and uplift.
Built with attention, breath, and care, the cube’s assembly — whether in 5 minutes or over hours — is a mindful act thanks to the input of our Japanese architect.
The cube reflects a core truth:
What we build from within and manifest, we become.
Sponsor Marc Symons: Bamboo, Joy & Legacy
With decades of experience and a deep commitment to ecological construction, Marc Symons of Bamboe België is far more than a craftsman. He instantly grasped the spiritual intention behind the cube — not only how to build it, but why it must be built.
Marc’s materials are sacred. His designs carry lightness, resilience, and joy. Without him, this project would not carry the same soul. His ethos — rooted in happiness and craft — is part of every fiber of the bamboo cube. He is also a visionary in new organisational forms and companies, the exact type of organization needed to create a network and to manifest a beautiful idea that will accompany many in times of challenge.
A Japanese Influence: The Spirit of Craft
The cube’s design is a collaboration with a young Japanese architect, trained at Waseda University and KU Leuven, inspired by movements of tea ceremony and craftsmanship. The collaboration serves as an act of transmission and encouragement — supporting a next generation of young Japanese architects with clarity and guidance. Her contribution is that the process and act of building the structure (be it in 5 minutes or longer) is just as important as the structure itself.
While the project is a collaborative effort, the original concept, vision, and final design of the cube are conceived and guided by Nathalie Ishizuka. Her contribution lies in both the spiritual and physical foundations of the structure, working closely with team members to bring it to life.
Ishizuka as such retains the right to freely exhibit the cube in public settings, with appropriate recognition given to the contributions of collaborators in any long-term or commercial context. Her unique value lies in evolving the cube over time—creating annual editions and thoughtful additions (such as windows, entryways, or tatami-inspired elements) that engage audiences and optimize space with elegance and ingenuity for art and crisis, much like the eagerly anticipated updates to an iPhone. Nathalie envisions the settings and events that best showcase the cube’s meaning and impact along with the story that will open our imagination and heart.
Light, Sound & Immersion: Stef Van Ansloy
Stef Van Ansloy is more than a sound and light engineer. He is a photographer and filmmaker whose images of Mt. Fuji and his short film will form a central part of the exhibition “Mt. Fuji Meets the Ocean.” He exhibited just prior to Nathalie Ishizuka profound works of Mt. Fuji at the Japanese Embassy in Belgium that caught Nathalie’s breath and heart.
Stef is also co-creator in future immersive installations. His expertise will bring:
Lighting spheres and interactive atmospheres
Sound and projection to transform the cube into a meditative chamber
Technical integration for scrolls, moving image, and multisensory formats
Stef will play a key role in both Casino Bellevue (Biarritz) and potentially the Asian Arts Museum in Nice.
In Partnership With…
The Sacred Bamboo Cube is part of a broader ecosystem:
The Ocean Label, where a sail is painted as meditative offerings to the ocean (the Water and Air Element) signalling a new pact with the Ocean. Collaborations include visionary contributions from elite navigators such as Didier Charvet, a former Olympic sailing coach, who was the first to envision the Rose des Vents painting integrated onto new carbon-reducing sailboats. It is important to Nathalie that his early insight and inspiration are fully recognised and honoured in any future development. His role holds a lasting place in the project’s evolution, with fair acknowledgment and benefit—offered freely and without expectation, so he may remain connected without stress or obligation.
A long-term vision for residencies and meditative retreats ideally in Villefranche sur Mer, Biarritz, and or other coastal cities which can envision the future to empower coastal cities with resilience and climate change applicable to other cities in France and the world
Potential partnership with Waves of Change, aligning art and resilience in key oceanic locations (Biarritz, Nice, Monaco, Barcelona, Cadaquez, Valencia or other)
The Cube can be placed near visionary ocean poles like Villefranche sur Mer or Biarritz, offering both symbolic presence and a platform for viewing art near the Ocean or Sea (short daily use) or inside a locale for experiences of original art works— or as a meditative anchor in longer exhibitions such as those hosted by the Asian Arts Museum in Nice.
Why the Asian Arts Museum in Nice?
The museum itself is a symbol: built by a renowned Japanese architect, it is grounded in the four classical elements — Earth, Water, Fire, and Air — expressed through four cubes and a sphere. It is the ideal location to begin this exhibition journey.
From Cities to Crisis
This cube is not just for museums nor the Ocean hub in Villefranche. It can be:
- A mobile installation in public squares
- A reflective station in coastal cities preparing for resilience
- A sacred space in refugee camps or disaster zones could be in partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), focused on delivering modular, rapidly deployable cube structures to provide safe, dignified, and temporary housing for displaced populations in emergency refugee camps. Our version is special because it could come with training on how to build and be within the cube for optimal experience and a culture within camps of respect and mutual assistance
- A meditative hub for experiencing art in a different vibration
- From Brussels to Biarritz, from Nice to Monaco, from the UN refugee camps to possibly the Vendee Globe — The Cube travels. The Cube breathes. The Cube transforms.
A Call to Support
- Host the Cube
- Sponsor the exhibition in their coastal cities “Mt. Fuji Meets the Ocean”
- Help seed these spaces of stillness in places that need them most
- Work with the Mayor and their core Crisis Teams in Key Coastal Cities
We invite mayors, cities, museums, climate actors, NGOs and cultural organizations to work with us and sponsor flexible structures that can grow with cities and be present both in good times and challenging ones.