I set out some of the projects I worked on, especially the projects focussing on innovation, social innovation, creativity and heritage. These were Creative Urban Renewal Northwest Europe, Material Encounters with digital cultural heritage and Artechlab. Next to this, I highlighted some of my lessons learned. The lecture can be found on Prezi. At the end of the lecture we’ve exchanged ideas on co-designing and collaboration.

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When we met the owner, mister Yoneda, he told us the tokonoma (the alcove) in this zashiki is made of wood from Yakushima. Yakushima has been my dream destination since child hood and in 2009 I was able to visit this magical island with huge cedar trees. Yakushima is inhibited by sea turtles and is the inspiration of the forest in Hayao Miyazaki’s film Princess Mononoke.

The use of the wood and the placement of a scroll, flower arrangement, bonsai or other decorative object shows that a lot of effort is put in the appearance of these tokonoma’s. In spite of these efforts the custom is to seat guests with their backs to the tokonoma so you don’t show off. Our tokonoma consists of a scroll with two women with a shamisen. Cesi (colleague AIR participant) has made some recordings of her shamisen class, which hopefully will show up in the final exhibition.

The doorways from room to room are traditional sliding doors (fusuma) made from a wooden frame, cardboard and a layer of paper. The fusuma’s have a traditional size, which makes them 1.70m tall. With such low doorways it feels like being in another world.  We suffered a few bumps to our heads until we got used to bending slightly before passing each room.

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They opened up the place which shows the wooden structure of the original building nicely.Another original detail is the elevated wooden floor. A good place to have a coffee, some cake and browse through one of the books.

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One of the traditions is keeping a bucket filled with water outside your house. In case of fire, the whole neighbourhood would gather the buckets to put the fire out. Which makes a lot of sense:  if a fire hit somewhere it would spread rapidly due to the closeness of the wooden structures. To this day, these buckets can still be found in front of houses, temples, etc. Sometimes you’ll spot the bucket next to the fire extinguisher.

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This farm is located in  Wazuka, a rural area 50 minutes by train from Kyoto. We’ve tasted some marvellous teas and, a bit ‘tea drunk’ walked through the surreal landscape of tea bushes mixed with rice plantations.

Amidst very old and traditional farms Obubu is considered a very young farm, which started in 2004 by Akihiro Kita and Yasuharu Matsumoto. They call their farm a ‘agricultural social venture’ with a mission to spread tea culture around the world. They provide an international internship and host events to attract young people. Walking around in Wazuka made me understand why. Japan has an aging population and in rural areas the elderly prevail. Young initiatives like the Obubu tea farm will help to revive not only tea culture but the rural area

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These pre-WWII townhouses housed craftsman or merchants. This double function (working & living) is reflected in the lay out of the machiya’s. This means that in the front of the house the goods were displayed or sold, and in the back you’ll find the living and the storage room or workshop. In between you’ll find a small garden and along the side the kitchen. Machiya’s are traditionally made from wood (the columns), earth (the walls) and paper (sliding doors) and therefore involve a lot of different crafts.

During the AIR I’ll be living in a machiya in Nishijin, the district known for its’ history in weaving and dying textiles. The lay out of this machiya is a bit different, because its function has changed throughout the years. It has two floors. On the ground flour (which is referred to as first floor in Japanese language) the owner Yoneda lives with in the back of the house his carpenters’ workshop. The first floor (or second floor in Japanese) is changed into an extra apartment.

Both living spaces look out onto a beautiful, well-kept garden (tsuboniwa). It is not a custom to enter a tsuboniwa, it is only for viewing. The centerpieces of these gardens are normally a stone lattern, a couple of stepping-stones, just a few plants, one tree, and a water basin. Although a lot of effort is put into the aesthetics of these inner gardens they’re not just merely made for the beauty of it. They are very functional in providing a way to cool down the house in summer or to warm the house with some sun in winter. This means that on warm days I close the windows in front of the house and open the ones looking onto the garden. In summer time bamboo blinds are hung in front of the window, which creates an extra shade to allow a fresh breeze into the appartment.

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Sometimes you’ll find one brave machiya standing strong between these giants. On one block a single machiya stands totally worn and torn, on another block as an elegant survivor.

Between 1996-2003 13% of the machiya’s have been destroyed. With a rough but moderate calculation, this means that if this trend continues within 50 years we will have only some preserved machiya’s left.

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Some of the private machiya’s are opened which makes the festival a great way to see behind the otherwise closed doors. One of the workshops I visited was about making roofs. This is an extremely labour-intensive  process, from making the tiles (which is largely made and formed by hand) to placing the tiles on the roof. Not much has changed in the last century, except from the material (now mainly imported from China) and some of the techniques, like the types of ovens used. Amazingly, according to the roofer, almost half of the tiles are not usable because of the variable quality in a batch. As an extra quality check, a few of the roofers have inherited this old habit of using their tongue to check the water permeability of the tile.

Next to showing old crafts (like making roofs, or making the clay walls), the Rakumachirakuya festival, also shows new approaches by design students.. Once upon a time in Japan a couple of generations lived under one roof, but nowadays that has changed. One of the students made a reference in his design to this tradition by redesigning a 100 years old machiya to be used as a community house for younger and older genarations. Another design example redesigned a machiya into a library combined with a sweet shop.

A good start is the Kamanzacho Cho-Ie, a 130 years old machiya which has been renovated three years ago with the help of the World Monuments Fund. Once it was owned by a familiy of saw makers, now it is rented out to Kyo-machiya Achitects, an organisation of carpenters, and other craftsmen specialised in restoring machiya’s and used as a community meeting place and model house. The bubble beneath shows a street view of the place. I also made two other bubbles: inside downstairs and inside upstairs.

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