Advanced Design Studies Blog: Critical Mass
G30 students joined a symposium at Sendai Mediatheque, which was slightly damaged by the earthquake and has been closed to the public. Mediatheque was opened for only a few hours to hold an event organized by Toyo Ito, Kengo Kuma, Kazuyo Sejima, Riken Yamamoto and Hiroshi Naito to discuss future activities proposed by those five architects. The event was packed with people from local communities and students from universities around Sendai.
Here are some rendered images from our last studio project – Tokyo Station Performative Ceiling.
Lab life of G30 studio after Super Review in New York and Princeton. Images include Deans Day BBQ at Princeton University, office visit to Jesse Reiser + Nanako Umemoto’s office, Glass House by Kengo Kuma, street of Chinatown and unknown food in New York City.
After 1.5 months form the earthquake, we have begun to pick up the pace again on our design research project. This term’s our focus is to develop a prototype for synthetic urban ecology in Tokyo, creating a new kind of infrastructure and architecture. Although, we have not yet completed our project, we traveled to New York and joined a final review – called super review – at Princeton and Colombia also joined by Tsingha University from Beijing.
While the university’s engineering department remains closed till May 6, Obuchi Lab G30 Studio met in a café to discuss the progress on their ongoing studio projects. Current studio topics, including alternative power plant, floating forest that generates fresh air by plankton in Tokyo bay, structure built with mussels which also functions as water purification system, will be developed further and will be presented at Princeton University joined by Columbia University and Tsingha University.
As usual, the AA is quick in making actions. To support the victims of the earthquake in Japan, Shin Egashira of the AA organized a fundraising event at the AA’s terrace, provided with yakitori and grilled food.
A few days after the mega earthquake shook Japan, Columbia students from New York led by Nanako Umemoto of Reiser+Umemoto have visited Tokyo to join midterm review organized by Princeton, Columbia and University of Tokyo. They were visiting Kyoto taking part in their Japan Trip Program when the earthquake hit. The review was planned 6 months in advance and all students from those schools in the US and also from Tsingha University in Beijing ware planning to participate.
Cecil Balmond+Roland Snooks Studio from University of Pennsylvania was presenting their projects at our school when the mega earthquake hit Japan last week. No one was hurt and no major damage to the building by the quake.
