Invisible AWT Bar in Tokyo Uses Heated Acrylic Panels to Distort Space and Reality

A Bar That Appears… by Almost Disappearing - Invisible AWT Bar

During Art Week Tokyo 2025, Ichio Matsuzawa Office introduced the invisible AWT bar, an experimental social space formed not through walls or solid partitions, but through light, transparency, and distortion. Instead of architecture shaping the room, the installation explores how material behavior — reflections, angles, and bending light — can become the true generator of form.

At the center of this exploration are thick acrylic sheets with over 90% transparency, heated until malleable and then bent into soft, organic curves. Once cooled, the acrylic becomes rigid again, capable of standing freely without structural support. These sculptural panels carve out pathways and micro-spaces within the open room, forming the essence of the invisible AWT bar.

A Space Made of Distortion and Reflection

Because the acrylic is so transparent, visitors rarely notice the panels themselves. Instead, they see what the material reflects: people walking, plants swaying outside, shifting light, and objects moving through the room. The acrylic bends these reflections into distorted layers, creating an ever-changing visual field.

The panels refract and transmit light differently depending on angle, distance, and time of day. As visitors move, the space changes with them. As the wind moves trees outside, the reflections ripple across the glass. The result is a continuous sequence of “momentary scenes” — a spatial experience defined not by architectural boundaries but by ephemeral visual events.

An Installative Environment Driven by Movement

Inside the invisible AWT bar, space is never fixed. Every gesture, every shift in light, every passing movement alters how the bar looks and feels. The design challenges the idea that architecture must be static or defined by opaque surfaces. Instead, Ichio Matsuzawa Office asks whether a space can be created through impermanence — through material reactions and environmental changes.

Complementing the acrylic forms are furniture pieces based on the architect’s own small-scale study models. These were scaled up into functional objects that echo the curves and atmospheric qualities of the acrylic. Together, they form an open, installative environment where structure emerges from transparency, not solidity.

A Study on Space Without Walls

The invisible AWT bar is ultimately a study in how architecture can be shaped by phenomena rather than form. With transparent acrylic panels acting as both mirror and distortion device, the space becomes a dynamic, shifting environment — part sculpture, part bar, part experiment in perception.

Rather than seeing the bar itself, visitors see the world through it.

Written by Otávio Santiago, a designer crafting visual systems that move between the tactile and the digital. His work combines motion, branding, and 3D exploration with a poetic sense of structure.