Satoyama
with Shaina Yang & Suk Lee
Asahikawa, Hokkaido, Japan
Spring 2020
This concept formed the basis for our six week study for a remedial master plan for the site of 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 largely 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.
Our proposed master plan transforms the site via mechanisms of micro-agriculture, biodiversification, and forest management. The entire site is rewilded, but with meaningful human intervention. The schema and design strategy employ a framework of pixelation and parceling - of land, program, and community - thus allowing for a schematic spreading across the entire mountain site while accommodating the various needs for rewilding, farming, and building required for the recovery of satoyaman biodiversity. It proposes a system of plats and clearings which organise circulation and occupation in the same gesture - placing both circulation and the buildings themselves along the edges of parcels, and allowing for a natural clustering of covalent programs and plats around shared clearings.
This participatory schema allows for an overall structure of centralised biodiversification, forest management, and satoyama style micro-agriculture to take place in a spatially decentralised fashion; in turn, each pixelized element of the forest ecosystem is able to occupy its own space for research and education while contributing to a larger whole.
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.
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
Building & Programmatic Strategy
To zoom in upon the site’s users for a moment, we created this diagram following our visit to Asahikawa.
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At the center are the actual foresters, which we met many of – the birch expert, the pine lumber producers, the mushroom researchers, and so on. To them, our project would provide a place to work, research, manage, and experiment – all in contribution to the larger project of satoyama biodiversification and forest management.
Adjacent are local Asahikawans who may not necessarily perform forestry for a living, but who we found to be well-attuned to forestry simply out of local culture. To them, the project would provide a place to connect to the forest next door, and give opportunities for them to perform “everyday satoyama” as citizens living next to forest.Â
And finally, there are the global visitors, of which there are a quickly growing number in the area. To them, the project would provide a place to learn about the area’s ecology, Hokkaido forestry, and local forest-adjacent crafts and products.
This gave rise to our central concept for the design of individual “atoms”: for each to have three distinct faces. Each program (but allowing for exceptions) would feature each of these aspects. For example: the chopstick maker might feature a shop and gallery as “the museum”, “the workshop” would be the literal workshop for chopstick making, and “the forestry” would be the thinning, collecting, and storage of branches from the forest – an act which helps maintain the forest as a byproduct of production in true satoyama fashion.Â
Spatialising this at the scale of a real building, we turned to a simple mechanism of stacking.
We also recognised the advantage of stacking our programs when it came to navigating the dramatic grade changes on site. The stacking allowed us to conceptualise a non-literal system of circulation that interacts in various ways with the topography, and allows for relationships between programs to develop via direct or indirect passage between them. Â
To illustrate the master plan at a finer grain, we played out several of our program clusters in the following illustrations.
Cluster A: Rice Management Center & Processing Mill
Cluster D: Central Administration & New Planting Management
(Repurposed University Building)
Cluster I: Wildlife & Broadleaf Management