Podium: ‹Beyond Scrap and Build›
18 Uhr (Englisch)
Mit: Norihisa Kawashima, Yutaro Muraji, Mio Tsuneyama, Sarah Nichols (respondent)
In Zusammenarbeit mit EPFL Architecture und Archizoom
Building culture in Japan has long been characterized by a “scrap-and-build” model, tearing down old buildings and erecting new ones in cycles of approximately thirty years to accommodate new needs. In recent years, however, financial constraints, declining demand for housing as the population shrinks, and an increased awareness of the environmental burden of this model have forced a shift from a consumption-centered "flow" paradigm to a "stock" paradigm whose emphasis lies on reusing existing building stock and building for the longer term. As rates of vacant houses in Japan reach new highs every year, the reactivation and transformation of the building stock inherited from previous generations is becoming an important – and urgent – new frontier in Japanese architectural practice.
In this event, three architects who are developing innovative approaches towards building beyond the scrap-and-build model will present on their research and practice.
> Yūtarō Muraji of CHAr focuses on the development of open-source “recipes” for DIY renovations of wooden rental apartment buildings, a mass housing typology that became prevalent in urban Japan during the post-war boom but is now often a cause of urban decay. Rather than focus on tailored solutions for individual buildings, his interest is in creating decentralized systems through which building transformations can be implemented in a mass scale.
> Norihisa Kawashima of Nori Architects conducts research on mid-rise office buildings, a very common typology of building stock dating from the 1980s and 1990s, as an untapped resource in Japan. The recent project Good Cycle Building in Nagoya is a pilot project using salvaged, recycled, and upcycled materials for how such a renovation might look like.
> On the scale of the individual building, Mio Tsuneyama (together with Fuminori Nousaku) is engaged in an ongoing experiment in „rewilding“ an unspectacular house from the 1980s through small and self-directed interventions in order to reconnect the building to the material, social, and thermal flows of the city.
Short presentations by the architects will be followed by a response and discussion moderated by Sarah Nichols, assistant professor of architecture at EPFL.
Ort: Forum Rolex, EPFL
Sprache: Englisch
