Project type: Summer Study Abroad, Misc. Projects
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Critic: Chris Jarrett and Jeffrey Nesbit
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 project I'll focus on is called Aging Urbanisms:
The driveway is often an afterthought in both tradition and modern design, as it seems to be a simple portion of land to park a vehicle. This field study explores the nature of the driveway in Japanese houses and other residential buildings. 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.
