Architecture

The 2013 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami hit the region of Ishinomaki a few hours North of Tokyo in Japan the hardest. The city was the closest point on land to the epicenter and is still dealing with the consequences until today.

As a response to the disaster, the government built steel evacuation towers and a giant concrete seawall along the coast.
These do not have any additional functionality and are not readily accepted or appreciated by the local population.

This project intends to extend one of these evacuation towers and give it a secondary use with an artist-in-residence program and a community center in the proposed addition.
The goal is to re-activate the sea promenade and create a meeting point for young people.

In the Glarus region in Switzerland exists a long tradition of carpentry. Due to the continued change in culture in modern times and by people moving away from the countryside and into the cities, there are vastly less carpenter apprentices in Glarus and especially in Glarus Sued than there used to be.
Schwanden is the largest village in Glarus Sued and is located at a fork in the road into the two valleys of the area.

Even if today, carpentry as a job is not as popular anymore, a lot of people are building their own furniture. In Schwanden exists a youthclub with a public workshop. However, to make a culture out of that, a public space is missing.

This project intends to remove the container garages adjacent to the youth club's building and to create a roofed public space there instead. The structural components will be CNC machined in the neighboring village and then assembled without large machinery, bit by bit, by the community.
The resulting roof can be used as a community center, market hall or as an addition to the workshop.

Nicosia, like Cyprus, is divided since 1974 by a demilitarized zone (green line) under control of the UN.
To bring the two sides closer together again, this project intends to create and arcade for music and events inside this green line.

The ruined buildings will be repaired and the created spaces can, together with the movable furniture spread throughout the project, be used by visitors as desired.

This creates missing public space in the city and encourages people from both sides to approach each other on neutral ground. The informal way of running the program and possiblity of people's appropriation of the project further enable this.