Discussions and Labyrinths

National Art Centre, Tokyo

After very little sleep (jet lag), I headed to the National Art Centre with Cara and Bridget (ACN), Amy (Bristol Architecture Centre) and Mark (Solent Architecture Centre).  The idea was to meet for breakfast to talk about the current changes in funding and education policy, and how that impacts upon our work.  Unfortunately someone hadn't read their guidebook properly (ahem, me) and the Art Centre was closed on Tuesdays.  Fortunately it was worth going to see the building.

Around the corner was the Mori centre, a labyrinthe housing an art gallery, shops and offices. After what  seemed like several hours of wandering through tunnels, up and down stairs, in and out of lifts, we finally found somewhere to have a coffee and an intense and interesting discussion about the changes we are facing in our work.

More labyrinths between Shinjuku station and our hotel.  And a lot of this:

Bridget explains what a map is to some built
environment learning professionals

So much of Tokyo is underground - a necessity in a city of 13million, with a staggering 34 million people living on the outskirts.  But with no landmarks to guide you, getting around as a foreigner is sometimes a challenge!

After lunch we headed off to Toyo Ito's architecture studio with much excitement.  The Toyo Ito Museum will open in July this year on a beautiful island in the north of Japan.  Toyo is very keen to get local audiences involved in activity at the museum and also establish some built environment education programmes in Tokyo.  We gathered in Toyo's meeting room with some members of Toyo's team, several academics and two planners from central government.  A series of presentations of our work, and that of Toyo Ito, took place, with plenty of questions and discussions.  It was very interesting to see the similarities in much of our activity, and fantastic that Toyo Ito is such an advocate of audience engagement!

Model of the Toyo Ito Museum, to open July 2011