Reflecting

Tokyo from the air

As I sit on the plane from Tokyo to Beijing, where I'm really looking to spending a few days with my little brother, I have had the chance to reflect on my fantastic week in Japan.  What an experience!  I have learned so much, and now have a real desire to find out more. Highlights of the trip have
been:

• our visit to the primary school
• meeting the Japanese CABE study group and enjoying a truly special meal with them
• having so many opportunities to talk to and learn from Japanese people working in the same field as us
• the multi-sensory experience that is Tokyo
• hearing Urban Renaissance Agency's embedded approach to community participation and engagement around social housing development
• getting to know, and sharing my experience with Cara, Amy, Mark and
  Bridget

The similarities between the built environment issues facing both Japan and England have really struck me, as have the commonalities in approach to built environment learning.  There have been lots of fascinating discussions and many, many laughs.

And I finally got to see Mount Fuji...from the plane!

I would like to thank Sasakawa Foundation for funding the trip, Cara Courage for organising it, Dr Aya Sakai for hosting and my TBE colleagues for helping me get away!

Thanks for reading, and I can't wait to see you all soon!  Janet

Yokohama

A fascinating day at Japan's second largest city, only 30 minutes south of Tokyo by (heat-seated!) train. Actually it was impossible to see where one city ended and the other began...

Yokohama, we learned, had a very interesting history.  A village until 1859, it was opened up that year as the first Japanese port in which foreign ships could dock.  This is evident from the European-influenced architecture, for example in the columned porticos and use of brick.  As a result of foreign trade, the village grew into a city, only to be devastated by an earthquake in 1923; only 8 buildings survived.  Having rebuilt itself, the city suffered decimation once more in 1945 when it was bombed by the US.  At this point, only 30 buildings, that had been constructed between 1859 and 1945, remained.  Following the war, the US used Yokohama as an army base.

Yokohama International Ferry Terminal  

Now the city is branding itself as 'Creative City Yokohama', home to many contemporary artists and Foreign Office Architect's Yohomana International Ferry Terminal. And we immediately got a sense of laid-back creativity as soon as we stepped out of the station.  A contrast to Tokyo, the streets were uncrowded, and there was a noticeable lack of neon and noise!

Our first meeting was at the Urban Renaissance Agency (UR).  This social housing developer owns 24% of public houses in Japan and our meeting with the person responsible for consulting and engaging with residents of new developments was extremely interesting and very relevant to the work we are doing at TBE.  I only wish my colleague Karen had been there!  We were told about how the UR was established in 1955 as a result of national policy to solve Japan's housing shortage, especially in urban areas.  The organisation responds to changes in demographics and the economic climate, which are currently very similar to the issues we face in England; an ageing population and
recession.  A further complication is that as the Japanese are having much smaller families, there is an overall fall in the number of households.  UR are aware that they need to diversify their housing stock to meet these changes in requirements, although they aim to maintain existing buildings as far as possible rather than demolish and rebuild.

UR's main objectives in terms of creating new developments are safe residents, supporting children, community cohesion, providing outdoor space and supporting older people.  This last objective is of particular relevance to our plans at TBE, so I was interested to hear that the organisation has
an 'Age-in-Place' programme which supports older people to live in their own house for as long as possible, through adapting existing housing and providing support advisors.

The UR director then talked us through a case study of community engagement around the redevelopment of Tamadaira Housing Complex in Tokyo.  They explained how existing residents were involved in the development from start to finish, from initial meetings with the city council and developers, to consultation workshops over the course of a year, in which they learned about architecture and green spaces and made suggestions for changes to original plans, some of which were integrated into the housing schemes. Community activities facilitated by UR, such as craft activities, summer festivals and exhibitions, continue long after the completion of building
work.

The model of community engagement and participation to which UR has been working for 15 years, is one which we at TBE aspire to.  It was fantastic to hear of a developer (albeit a publicly funded one) embracing this model. The benefits of working in this way, as articulated by UR, are familiar and
obvious: residents are much less resistant to changes they feel a part of, and take a much more active part in maintaining the new development.

After a delicious Bento box in the spacious and very trendy art space next door to UR's offices, we headed to BankArt, yet another fantastic and super-cool art space!

BankArt 1929, Yokohama

At BankArt, we met the Culture Director from Yokohama City Council, who gave us a fascinating and detailed overview of Yokohama Creative City, a strategy designed to combat Japan's economic, demographic and social (Japan has a suicide rate 3 times higher than UK and does not even register on the Gross National Happiness indicator scale) problems.  The strategy includes encouraging creative industries into the area through offering very cheap studio space, four publicly owned art spaces and many creative public programmes and events, including sending artists to work in 50 primary
schools (an idea they got from the British Council).  This year's theme is 'Everyone is an artist', and again, it was fantastic to hear of a local government recognising the importance of creativity and culture and making such a big investment in this area.

The director of BankArt talked us through the work of the space and its many exciting projects, following which we were shown round the huge, concrete studios, where people were rehearsing for a multi-space dance performance, and we met some London-based artists who were installing an enormous map for the delivery of an architecture workshop.  Strangely, one of the artists
lives 5 minutes down the road from me...it's a small world!

Our host, Dr Aya Sakai with Bridget, Mark and Cara

Down in the cafe it was time to thank Dr Aya Sakai who, over the week, had shown extreme patience in helping us buy train tickets, escorting us everywhere, answering our many questions and tirelessly translating for us (as a result of translating our presentations, Aya knows as much about UK
built environment learning activity as we do!).  For our last meal, we headed to Yokohama's Chinatown (the biggest outside China!) and, yet again, ate very very well!  And then back to our hotel in Tokyo, for a final goodbye drink with my fantastic learning colleagues from the ACN, Bristol
and Southampton.

Sensory overload

It was a beautiful sunny morning as Cara, Bridget and I took advantage of our few hours free time and set off early for the Meiji shrine.  A lovely, peaceful place in the middle of a wood - a green haven from the noise, lights and shops of Tokyo.

Tokyo from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building,
with the 'Cocoon' building on the left

After some present buying in the trendy Harajuka area, Cara and I took a lift to the 45th floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building to get a bird's eye view of Tokyo.  From that vantage point, I really got a sense of a vast new Asian city: flat, modern and sprawling as far as the eye can see.  Although sunny, it was a shame that the smog obscured our view of Mount Fuji.

In the afternoon we travelled for about an hour to Kashiwa, a northern suburb of Tokyo, to visit the Urban Design Centre.  The brand new train line reminded me of the shiny new London Overground (although the Tokyo version had heated seats - come on London Transport!), and indeed the project we visited centred on new urban housing development, similar to those TBE is involved with in Hackney.

Urban Design Centre Kashiwa

The two directors of the centre welcomed us into their bright, spacious, purpose built public exhibition and meeting space, and told us about their work  to encourage the development of a community in this newly built garden city. The project is a collaboration with Tokyo University and the local government, which started with a residents forum, and now has the ambitions to create a good quality sustainable garden city and local creative culture and industry.

Model of Kashiwa's built
environment at the Urban
Design Centre

To do this the Urban Design Centre Kashiwa provides information to the public about future development plans; organises meetings with residents, built environment professionals and local government officials; and delivers workshops to encourage residents to participate in the development of the area, through community activities and workshops on subjects such as eco-design.  It was very interesting to hear how the Urban Design Centre had created a sense of community, hear the directors' aspirations to continue the project beyond the completion of building development, and learn that the fantastic space would become a permanent community centre for the residents of Kashiwa.  The members of the Urban Design Centre Kashiwa were also very interested to hear about our work in the architecture centres.

We arrived back in central Tokyo after our meeting at 7pm looking forward to the prospect of spending an hour at Tokyo Hands, an enormous stationery/craft supplies department store.  I was on a mission to get Aimee some origami paper, particularly as she had helped me so much in the mad rush to get out of the office on the Friday evening before travelling to Japan.  You can imagine our disappointment when we found it was closed...for 5 days...

Neon Tokyo

Still, we were cheered up with a walk around the neon lights of Shinjuku, the Golden Gai (narrow alleyways with tiny stalls, where 'salary men' sit at counters drinking beer and eating barbecued meat) and the more chilled out restaurant area of Yoyogi.  After dinner, Bridget and I went up two more high rise towers to see the lights of Tokyo's sprawl against the night sky.

Returning to the hotel at 11.30 I was exhausted....an overload of neon, noise, smells, consumerism and crowds had taken its toll, and I looked forward to a day out of the city the next day.

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

...sashimi and snow!

And so to a 6.15 meeting on the 49th floor of an office block with the CABE Study Group, a highly skilled and experienced collective of academics, local and national government planners, design consultants and journalists, with the mission of promoting "good design in the field of architecture and the built environment".  We listened to a very interesting presentation about the groups aspirations for design review, enabling and built environment learning programmes and told them about our work back in the UK.

Discussions about our work continued over dinner, kindly hosted by the CABE Study Group, and which is best described as follows:

We started with a dish of mushroom, yam and potato, followed by tofu and spring onion.  Then...

Sea bream sashimi

Sea bream teriyaki

Yellow tail, carrot, horseradish and mange-tout

Special Kyoto potato prawn-shaped tempura with seaweed

Saki

Sea bream and rice with green tea soup stock

Rice cakes with red bean sauce

So a great evening, and happy and slightly heavier, we travelled down 50 floors to find Tokyo covered in snow!

Schools, soba,....

Happy Monday!  What an amazing day.

Started at 7am with a run...well more of a walk because running isn't possible when you're looking up at buildings and need to keep stopping to cross the road.  But I found a lovely park nearby, in which I shall run another time.

The day started properly at 8.15 when we met Aya, who is our host, translator and organiser, and is doing a great job of being 'mum' to four giddy grown-up kids.  From Shinjuku station we took a train (clean, shiny and spacious - take note London Transport!) and taxi to an elementary school in the suburb of Edogawa, where we were greeted by a smiley head teacher.  Having put on our slippers, we were escorted into the school hall, as guests of honour to seventy lovely 11 year olds, celebrating an award for an amazing built environment education programme (more later).  The children treated us to 'Land of Hope and Glory' on the recorder, a Japanese song, and a description of their project in English!  A truly moving experience.

We then had the opportunity to look at the children's work - playful and colourful plaster cast models of 'Our Dream Town', pottery tea cups, photographs, maps drawings and written work.  Each of us was presented with a 'Dream Town' and pottery 'sweet plate' made by the children, following which an energetic, enthusiastic and inspiring art teacher told us about the project he had developed and delivered  as part of the children's 105 hours 'integrated studies'.  Focussing on the development of Edogawa, where the school is located, the project aimed to develop the children's creative and communication skills and give them 'practice for being future members of residential groups'.

Several planners from the local government also attended our meeting and explained how they had worked closely with the children to give them an historical background to the area, tell them about future development plans and gather their ideas for a new park.  The teacher had obviously worked extremely hard, taking the children out on trips, preparing resources and organising public meetings at which the children shared their work.  Three year groups from the school had been involved in the project, which culminated in the creation of three 2m x 3m plaster cast models of 'Our Dream Town' and a printed leaflet about the local park to be used by visitors.  An inspirational project.  We left the school to a line of excited 8 year old children, all keen to shake our hands and shouting 'see you' as we walked down the road.

On the way back to the station we visited the local Japanese garden which had been the focus of the 6th grade (12 year old children) project.  The potential of the small space had been masterfully maximised, with waterfalls, secret paths, bamboo, topiary, a dry garden, stepping stones and surprises around every corner.

Back in central Tokyo, we had a delicious lunch with Aya (me: Soba noodles and seafood tempura), and headed for the Imperial Palace, sadly only accessible on the Emporer's birthday.  Instead we visited the vast glass, steel and wood ship-like atrium of Tokyo International Forum, built by Rafael Vinoli, before heading back to the hotel. A full and fascinating day.

I'm in Tokyo!

Wow the journey took for ever (a special thanks to the man sitting next to me for 9 & half hours to Beijing, with his protruding elbows, wandering pillow and constant sniffing...), but I'm here at last.  I must mention Beijing Airport, which was chaotic last time I was there in 1999, but is now a large, gleaming, and very efficient Norman Foster building.

It's been dark since I arrived in Tokyo, but first impressions....Exciting!  Neon!  Shopping! (I'm allowed to say that cos it's still Sunday)  Loads of cool young people wandering about (hmm, very similar to Kingsland Road)!  And guess what the view is from my hotel window???  Tokyo's Metropolitan Government building (see picture) by Kenzo Tange... how fantastic - can't wait to see it in daylight!

So, having thrown my bags in my room, I went out with Cara and Amy to find vegetarian food.  Not easy in Tokyo, especially at 9pm on a Sunday evening, and when we can't even speak because of  jet-lag.  Eventually we stumbled upon some tofu and cucumber sushi - perfect!  Tomorrow is when the real excitement starts.  We're off to visit a primary school in the morning, can't wait!  (Please excuse the excessive exclamation marks...!)