Aging in Tokyo
With an aging population, there is a concern in Japan that elders have less connection with the youth than anywhere else in the world. Being tasked with utilizing empty space to tackle this, the solution has to deal with a gathering place accessible and attractive to all age groups.
Info
Role: Designer
Team: Benjamin Simmons
Critic: Chris Jarrett, Jeffrey Nesbit
Softwares/Hardwares: Rhino 3D, Adobe Creative Suite, V-Ray, Physical Model Making, Carpentry, Masonry
During the Summer of 2023, I had the privilege of traveling to Tokyo with a select number of students from UNC Charlotte's School of Architecture. Over the course of the study abroad program we completed a number of small projects, including a collaboration with Meiji University students and faculty.
The driveway is often an afterthought in designing a home. It appears to be a conveniently carved portion of land to park a vehicle.
"The driveway is an afterthought". In most cases this is true, but it should be noted that this particular programmatic element of a house is seldom used in a dense urban environment like Tokyo, Japan. The driveway is a private room for your vehicle. In Tokyo, I have observed that the ways in which these driveways are intertwined with their homes differs. They protrude, frame, and meander around a homes envelope hoping to have a say in the matter. The question is whether or not they confront the home or the street.
From single family homes to apartments, the driveway has proven itself to be an interesting formal quality of buildings in Tokyo. Because of its dense population, residents in Tokyo must utilize the maximum amount of space for living, leaving a place to park your car an essential design issue rather than a paved spot of excess land. Due to the population and shrinking lot size in Tokyo, houses and apartments have changed the geometry of their streets through the design of their driveways.
The intervention will consist of a series of canopies, playgrounds, and green spaces stitched together by ramps and other platforms that carve into and out of the space once used for cars. In the future, driveways in Tokyo will become dead space. Utilizing these driveways with built extensions and carved out space will offer places for the elderly and youth to interact and spend time together. Structures are built into the now empty driveway cutouts left in buildings and connect to others. These extensions will serve was circulation platforms bringing elderly civilians to more larger play areas, allowing them to interact with a younger population.
