RE-CLOTHING CENTER

The fashion industry affects the environment at every stage, for example, the procurement of raw materials to the production, transportation, and disposal of fab- rics and garments. Garments are made from a mixture of materials, and are produced in a number of factories and companies overseas. As a result, it is difficult to grasp the actual status and full extent of environmental impact. While the number of garments supplied in Ja- pan is increasing, the price per garment is getting low- er every year, and the market size is decreasing. Mass production and mass consumption are expanding, and the life cycle of clothing is becoming shorter. The trend toward mass disposal is accelerating. This is one of the reasons why the fashion industry has such a large im- pact on the environment. In fact, the average annu- al clothing consumption per person today is about 18 pieces of clothing purchased, 12 pieces of clothing giv- en away, and 25 pieces of clothing not worn. This means that there are a lot of clothes that are produced and pur- chased, but not worn and thrown away.

Ikebukuro is a place where department stores such as Seibu and other shopping facilities such as Sunshine City are concentrated. A wide range of clothes are sold there, from luxury brands to fast fashion, and many people come to Ikebukuro to buy clothes. Many people visit Ikebukuro to buy clothes. In such places, fashions go out of style quickly, and you can see big red letters saying “Sale” at the entrance of stores everywhere. These signs entice consumers to buy. But even then, the unsold items are not recycled, but discarded.

Planned obsolescence is one of the ways to stimulate consumers to buy and consume. It is a method to make consumers buy new products by designing them in ad- vance so that their quality will intentionally deteriorate during use. In addition, short warranty periods and high repair costs also encourage consumers to buy. The system of mass production and the strategies of these companies continue to incentivize consumers to buy. It has become normal for consumers to live in a cycle of buying new things and then throwing them away. They have formed an easy way of thinking that if they find a slight defect, it is time to replace it.

Modern people today prefer to buy new products that are free of defects. But Naples refuses to do that. For ex- ample, when a car breaks down, it is repaired using a wooden stick found in the street. That repair is tempo- rary, so they will repeat repairs and breakdowns. In oth- er words, they believe that objects are made up of a cy- cle of breakdown and repair. It is through the repair of broken objects that we can understand the mechanisms of objects. Modern people have forgotten this fact.

All objects fall apart and break down as we use them. As we repeatedly repair and rebuild them, we gradual- ly become attached to them. Attachment is the act of using something as long as it does not lose its function due to damage or breakage. In this way, the damaged part of a piece of metalwork is reevaluated as a value, and it is transformed into an attachment. We believe that clothes can be treated in the same way. Observe the flaws in the clothes and give them the appropriate treatment. This may be a time-consuming process, but it may allow us to continue using the clothes for a long time with affection.

PHILOSOPHY OF DECOMPOSITION (2019)

Fujiwara Tatsushi

The world we live in is filled with abundance between new products and waste, production and products, life and death for example grbage that transforms into toys, robots that return to the earth, whales that are buried, invisible microorganisms and so on. This book exam- ines the possibilities of “disassembly,” which is now talked about even more negatively, in various fields such as pedagogy, robotics, scrap pickup, ecology, and the world of repair.

Re-a-pier

Odaiba, as an artificial island, started with a lot of locked Res communis, such as the water, beaches, plants etc. However, Odaiba was almost abandoned after the Second World War. The access to the island and its resources were also extremely limited, so few people went to the Odaiba area during that period. Then, the government wanted to change Odaiba area into a commercial center, building Lex communis such as piers and waterfront promenades along the coastline to attract more people. Because of this Lex communis, a series of Praxis communis appeared such as photography. As such, the Odaiba waterfront reached the current ecology balance. However, the frequency and the variety of the Praxis communis is not sufficient since the Lex communis provided is not efficient and the Res communis cannot be fully unlocked. The proposal of our group is the redesign of the existing piers. We used the same structure systems and designed a series of piers with different topics to provide for various experiences for both local residents and tourists. And, more activities (Praxis communis) will happen along the waterfront by the enhanced Lex communis. As such, more Res communis will be unlocked. Consequently, the ecology after the proposal will become more lively and dynamic.

VERTICAL FARM

LIVELIHOOD UPROOTED, COMMONS EMACIATED

My mother has a vegetable garden as a hobby while she works. Amagasaki’s grandfather also makes a living from farming. There is a fundamental joy of life, as if one is rooted in the land through plants. However, in a capitalist society, there is more than that. When the logic of capital is brought into the business of hobbies to an excessive degree, our live- lihood becomes labor, and we are “uprooted “1. The healthy ecology, that is, The linkage between the “public,” “private,” and the “commons” which was supported by the layers of nature, has been bloated and destroyed by the influx of com- modified goods and service substitutes2 (Fig. 1). Production has been black-boxed by industry, and the commons and our convivial joy rooted in it have been emaciated.

DISCONNECTION BETWEEN HOBBY-LIKE PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION IN IKEBUKURO

We can also see this effect in the behavior of the city we observed in Ikebukuro. For example, we can see that one of the buildings has gardening plants growing out of the building, and on the other side, there is a Halal restaurant (Fig. 2), but even if vegetables are growing in the garden, they are not eaten in the restaurant next door. In Ikebukuro, you can see many gardens, but even if there are vegetables nearby, you cannot eat them. In Ikebukuro, there is a com- plete disconnect between consumption and the production of individual skills, even though they are often adjacent to each other. Architecture must become the infrastructure that connects the desire for the pleasure of growing plants with consumption, making plants com mon and creating a small cycle.

STRATEGY FOR CITY FARMING COMMONS

How can this be achieved in cities? For the commons to be powerful in a city where everything is large, it needs a broader coalition than it has in rural areas. In terms of skill level, the number of core members may not be that differ- ent from the practice in rural areas, but the amount of par- ticipants and observers3 should be much larger. Therefore, there is a serious problem with the quantity of vegetables. In addition to root vegetables that can only be grown in soil, those that can be grown hydroponically can be grown using the vertical farming method, making it possible to grow enough vegetables for about 120,000 meals4.

OPEN TECHNOLOGY AND SMALL CIRCULATION

Agriculture is becoming a very high-tech industry today5. Vertical farming is one of the best examples. Temperature, water composition, and genetics are completely regulated by artificial intelligence. The harvesting and maintenance is largely mechanized, and humans watch it on iPads. In this project, it is necessary to diagnose and anatomize vertical farming, rather than operating it as such a manipulative and closed technology, and to recombine it into a more open technology for conviviality6. It is not just a matter of making high-tech low-tech; it is a matter of reconfigur- ing technology so that it can be maintained and managed without the politics and power of control and manipula- tion that separate us from the plants. The agricultural pipes used in plastic greenhouses should be used as a framework, and the components should be as simple as possible. The growing environment should not be controlled discretely by microcomputers on a unit-by-unit basis, but rather by conventional air conditioning technology and circulation throughout the building. The technology is a key in the whole system, in which the water from the spring becomes the circulating water for the water-cooled heat pump chiller, which gradually returns to the same temperature as the environment within the building, and then returns to the environment through transpiration by the plants.

DEPARTMENT STORE REVOLVES, FAÇADE REVOLVES

When a department store is weighted according to the com- mercial value of its homogeneous structure, the spectacular intersections and avenues become the front, and the rest the back. Instead, the next generation of department stores will look to the abundant resources around them – in this case, gardening skills, water, sun, and wind – and bring the place of production back to your neighborhood. In this way, the sunny south of the building will be penetrated by the di- mension of plants, creating a new façade where production and circulation can be seen.

Nippori / Station as Threshold

Nippori Station is where the Narita line transfers to the Yamanote line. It is the first station where foreign tourists arrive, a number that has increased recently. Many foreigners move to the transfer trains while dragging their suitcases. Yanaka Ginza is located to the west side of the station. It is a popular sightseeing spot where old-fashioned townscapes are surprisingly well-preserved as they escaped war damage and the large scale development in the city center. Nippori station holds 14 train tracks. It consisted of 2 bridge outsite of ticket gate that connects west-east side of the station, and 3 bridges that connects several platform inside the ticket gates. The bridge that connects the east and west side of the city located in the north is a famous spot called the “Train Museum”, crowded with people who come to watch many kinds of trains pass on the track. In the future, where the ticket gate will be touchless and gateless, there will be nothing to separate these two bridges from each other. Exploring the use of local potential for the tourism in future, what would bridge of Nippori station will look like? The two types of bridges are connected so that people can come and go in between and a luggage service is set up on the Keisei line side. This will create an opportunity for the foreign tourists to use their spare time enjoyably while waiting for flights at Narita airport, or for the of hotel check-in, by being able to walk in Yanaka Ginza. A middle floor between the platform and the bridge is installed to develop a train museum. For the local people this intervention will become the base of spreading the culture of Yanaka Ginza to foreign countries. In the flow of local people and foreign visitors passing by each other, the fusion space of two kinds of bridges will be the meeting point where cultures form distant foreign countries meet each other. This is symbolized by the roof structure that alternately straddles the two bridges.

Partition

The history of the exterior partition-wall in the Japanese house seems to run in an opposite direction to the modern European one: from a succession of spatially differentiated thresholds to an overall technical ensemble. In the pre-modern period the building envelope was defined by its rich depth, which often embraced the entire house and its garden, forming a multi-layered and porous interaction between outside and inside. The enclosure of the post-war Japanese house, on the other hand, is reduced to a solid wall assembled out of mass-produced elements, leading to the collapse of the spatial multi-layeredness and its replacement by several functionally clearly delimited elements, namely the compact wall and its various openings, such as sash windows, air-conditioners, steam outlets, etc. In recent condominiums the wall has become defined by its increasing technological dependence, with a double, often contradictory goal: an ideal tightness of the enclosure and a series of highly controlled openings, gradually cutting off the inhabitants from their natural outside environment while creating a highly artificial one on the inside.