Master Plan, with Shaina Yang & Suk Lee
Asahikawa, Hokkaido, Japan
Spring 2020
Satoyama is a Japanese term used to describe the border where forest and field meet—sato meaning village and yama meaning mountain—but more than that, it describes a pre-modern mode of making next to the forest in Japan that faded post-industrialisation. Unlike its counterpart okuyama—the truly wild forest—satoyama carries with it an explicit reference to human management. Today, it is receiving renewed attention in Japan and beyond, from a best-selling book published in Japan to the UN’s Satoyama Initiative celebrating its ten year anniversary in 2020. This concept formed the basis for the first project of the semester, a remedial master plan for Asahikawa's abandoned Tokai University.
The concept of circular cultivation has a particular urgency for Japan’s forests. An increasing body of research has discovered that there are real ecological impacts to the downfall of satoyama living. These peasant forests–with their unique blend of rice paddy wetland next to farmer-coppiced tree stands–begot their own unique ecosystem with a higher biodiversity of both plants and wildlife than unmanaged, hinterland forests. These ecosystems, like satoyama itself, have now faded.
In Asahikawa, there remains a clear division between the forest and farm, despite the city’s most famed resources being their excellent lumber and their delicious rice. This project seeks to create a “third space” by stitching these two realms together–forest and farm, woods and city–via the revitalisation of the lost satoyama ecosystem.
Based on the program list we developed, we arrived at a new entanglement diagram: a larger, more diverse one. Reflecting the forest ecosystem itself, we established natural clusters of program – bears and bees, owls and rodents, pine and mushroom – and used this as the basis for basic spatial alliances while still allowing for clear programmatic pixelation.
Site Strategy
Having established a loose system of organisation, the next step was to locate the ecological source of the satoyama ecosystem: the rice paddy. Returning to the site, we faced these existing conditions: a steep mountain with some challenging grade changes, a large stand of existing forest, and areas which we sought to rewild.
Our solution schema became a system of parcelisation. As a generic method as opposed to a specific location, we tested parcelisation at various scales and with various rules.
The first aspect of the parcelisation system is the plats it produces. With this system, the community is able to select a handful of well-located plats to create clearings dispersed throughout the forest, whilst also providing a useful framework for dividing up management and sponsorship of the expansive forest. Placing clearings amongst plats of heavy forest became our primary strategy for locating rice paddies within and across the mountain.Â
We do note that much of the mountain is north-facing, and is not conducive to agriculture; some plat clearings which would be designated for non- rice-growing uses (greenhouses, deerkeeping, etc) due to their aspect. In addition, because the aim in the introduction of rice is primarily to create a specific ecological condition as opposed to efficiently producing rice, we have imagined each rice paddy to lend itself to experimental purposes – researching new strains of rice, new methods of growing, different types of paddy configuration and so on.
In the same gesture of parcelisation, we also arrive at a network of edges. The most obvious benefit of this network is the natural circulation systems which emerge. First, there is a promenade of pedestrian paths through the thickets along the boundaries between plats. Then, we were also able to co-opt select edges for vehicular circulation, extending the existing road to allow for necessary car and truck access which is an essential part of forestry work.Â
The edges of the clearings specifically provide a natural siting logic for the various buildings themselves. Following the natural ecological clusters we identified earlier, buildings surround shared plats so that they may form tiny circular economies and mutually beneficial relationships.
Notably, this system also allows for a specific type of participatory programming. Buildings on the edge of a clearing might own or administrate the adjacent plat; this allows programs to function both on an often necessarily isolated level as well as in cooperation with others. The birch building, for example, may provide bark to its neighbour the basketmaker within the ecosystem of the shared clearing plat – but on its own, in the plat adjacent, maintains and manages a stand of birch trees.Â
Cluster A: Rice Management Center & Processing Mill
Chair Museum
Higashikawa, Hokkaido, Japan
The second project is a building on a hill, situated on a managed forestry plot outside Higashikawa town, to house the chair and furniture collection of local collector, Mr. Oda. Nearly 1400 objects make up the archive, here imagined as the core focus of a new research institution whose goal is to foster a responsible relationship between forestry management and the booming local furniture industry.
The history of the chair in Japan is much briefer than the history of sitting. This project uses the productive dissonance between Japanese architecture's traditional relationship to posture and western standards of ergonomics that are embodied in the collection pieces as an animating elevational device that brings the delight of unexpected skips and shortcuts through a chronological circulatory and curation strategy that slowly winds up the hill and back down.