For our Wednesday, September 7th Design Open Mic program, we had presentations from Hiromi Tabei, Design Fellow for the Tohoku Reconstruction Program, and Nick Sowers, Designer, Founder and Author at Soundscrapers.
Having just returned from a two-week trip to Japan -- her first since the March earthquake -- Hiromi took some time out during the lunch hour to give us an update on the Architecture for Humanity projects currently underway in the Miyagi prefecture. Download Hiromi's presentation, below.
As a preface to this year's upcoming Open Architecture Network Challenge that deals with demilitarized spaces, Nick Sowers came and talked to us about the research he did while touring occupied and former military bases in 2009. According to Sowers, stepping onto a military base is an act of time travel -- a currently occupied base is often said to be like going back in time, to a 1950s suburban America. A closed military base can have the opposite effect, projecting into a future of scarce resources, where the jungle reclaims the city. Check out highlights from Nick's presentation and download his slides, below.
- Attachment: Japan_Hiromi_Tabei.pdf (7.13 MB)
- Attachment: PostMilitary_Nick_Sowers.pdf (10.5 MB)
