“Yeast” for creating mature urban landscape.
This project is the landscape architecture of a hospital and a medical school at Fukuoka-city in Japan. There are many facilities (TV stations and library, museum, high-rise apartments, elementary school and so on) around this site.We thought that the most important points in the design process are “Recognizable concept” and “Furniture as devices”, “Creating the blank space”. With this in mind, we studied and designed.
-Recognizable concept-The site is divided into several areas by a hospital and a medical school.However, these areas are not just remainder area of building area. So we created the areas which have recognizable concept. For example, the area is created by elements of “furniture”, or “circle”, or “curve line”. In fact, people can clearly recognize the design concept of the area when look at there. While these various and self-reliant areas moderately connect each other, and create “one environment”
- Furniture as “device” -We placed the big stools and a table, lumps at the main area. The big furniture has two purposes. The first purpose is to provide “attractive effect”. the big furniture have presence to get people attention. In do so, people have a feeling of intense attraction toward the big furniture and gather the area. The second purpose is to provide “various usages”. A big stool naturally functions as “stool”, big table functions as “table”. However, sometimes the big furniture changes in function, for example, change a stage, a play equipment and so on. In fact, we proposed the big furniture as “device” which provide people with opportunities to communicate each other, and which create various activities.
- Creating the blank space -We carefully studied and planed the blank space between elements (bench, pavement, tree and so on) which are fundamental to create the space in the design process. It goes without saying that the blank space don’t exist in material form. However we considered the blank space as “device” which is functional equivalent of the big furniture. Two devices, the big furniture and the blank space, interact with each other, and function.
Our proposal is to suggest that the landscape architecture don’t drastically changes the environment around the site, but gradually makes it a more affluent society with the march of time. In fact, we proposed the landscape architecture like “yeast” which creates mature urban landscape.