A village priest blesses the future home of the Ooya Green Sports Park.
As part of their larger mission to rebuild livelihoods in the Tohoku region of Japan, Architecture for Humanity carefully supports the best local partners’ efforts to build projects that serve the community. On the Open Architecture Network, you can see the many, many forms these projects take on.
Over the past six months, we've built a solid network of local partners. We've worked with young people and their advocates to find - and support - the most inspiring of the projects they've dreamed up.
Paper Crane Sculpture, Sendai
Status: Design Development
Students from the Tohoku University of Art & Design will create a large sculpture using paper cranes folded by Students Rebuild supporters. The sculpture will be unveiled early in January at the Sendai Train Station, where it will remain on display until finding a permanent home in a Tohoku public school. At the unveiling, over a thousand local youth will collaborate to create miniature paper crane sculptures to be displayed throughout the station. Partner: Tohoku University of Art & Design. Cost: $20,000.
Kashiwagi Daycare Center Addition, Sendai
Status: Design Development
The Kashiwagi Daycare Center suffered only minor damage from the 2011 earthquake. However, they have agreed to accept many students from surrounding daycare facilities that were damaged by the earthquake and/or tsunami. An urgent expansion is underway, which will allow the center to accommodate additional students next spring. Students Rebuild is sponsoring the construction of an outdoor learning and play space. Partner: Hiroto Suzuki Architects & Associates. Cost: $40,000.
Ooya Green Sports Park, Motoyoshi, Kesennuma, Miyagi
Status: In Construction
After the tsunami hit northern Japan, many sports fields and playgrounds at local schools were re-purposed as sites for temporary housing. These housing units may stay as long as three years, disallowing school kids access to sports facilities. At the Ooya Junior High School all of the sports grounds have been overtaken by temporary homes. The coach of the schools soccer team also happens to be an asparagus farmer and has generously donated his land to be a sports field for the school - thus was born the Ooya Green Sports Park. Designed by Design Fellows Tomoro Aida and Aida Atelier, this simple design utilizes disused fishing equipment to build a protective sports compound and re-purposes debris for seating. A groundbreaking ceremony was held on November 5, 2011, and the park aims to open early in the new year. Partner: Nike. Cost: $78,000.
Shizugawa Judo Juku, Shizugawa, Minami-sanriku-cho, Miyagi
Status: Design Development
Almost every junior high and senior high schools in Japan has its own Judo team, but Shizugawa is special for having a school in the town where elementary school, junior high, and high school students all train together. The original location of the school was completely washed away; today, nothing remains but the foundation. Most of the students' and instructors' homes did not fare much better. Currently, the students are practicing Judo in a partitioned part of a fishing warehouse belonging to one of the student's family. Due to loss of life and displacement, the current size of the dojo is less than one-third the size of a normal one. We are going to winterize the space and add a door: the frigid Tohoku winter is coming just around the corner! Cost: $7,500.
Akahama Covered Alley, Otsuchi-cho, Kamihei-gun, Iwate
Status: Design Development
Akahama village lost 100 residents out of 900. Most of the survivors moved into temporary housing. Though people are expected to stay in the temporary housing for at least 2 the years, they are prepared to be there for much longer, as they learned from 1995 Kobe Earthquake, when slow reconstruction delayed victims’ return to their own homes or to newly developed public housing) Because of the unplanned placement of residents and the layout of units, a sense of community in the temporary camp is lacking. With the help from NPO Midori-no-ie School, the community proposed a covered alley between units built on a slope in order to connect upper units and lower units. Currently, residents have to walk on a steep slope, and they are worried snow and ice on the slope in the winter will make the terrain extremely dangerous to walk on. Partner: Residents of Akahama Temporary Housing Complex. Cost: $51,000.
Hikado Marketplace, Kesennuma-shi, Motoyoshi-cho, Miyagi, Japan.
Status: Complete
The Hikado Marketplace is a prominent local gathering space, and one of the first local buildings to be reconstructed following the tsunami. Architecture for Humanity lent design and construction support for a covered wooden deck made of salvaged timber. The project was completed in June 2011. The owner, carpenters and all parties involved making this project a reality had an opening celebration in July 2011. In the beginning of August, people from three neighboring communities utilized the space to hold a very successful summer festival. Today, people moved into nearby temporary housing come and enjoy a bowl of ramen noodles for lunch and a glass of cold beer after work. Cost: $9,000.
In Japan, the political and economic landscape of reconstruction is complex. While the Japanese government welcomes the support and services of voluntary actors like Students Rebuild and Architecture for Humanity, the government often requires that benefactors finance projects in their entirety. Because schools in Japan are so large and expensive compared to Haiti, and because the Japanese government's requirements are very strict, this means that large development actors like UNICEF are best suited to support most school rebuilding efforts in Tohoku. Since Students Rebuild's resources are limited and we want to help as many young people as possible, we've found an important opportunity to meet young people's needs that may have otherwise been overlooked. As we move forward, we'll continue to update our Japan Project Progress Tracker to give you a better look at how YOU make a difference.
The Sendai Mediatheque might be the most famous contemporary building in the northern half of Honshu known as Tohoku. The building is–along with its architect Toyo Ito–admired by designers and engineers around the world. A popular local tourist destination, the Mediatheque serves the one million residents of Sendai as a powerful community resource. In it, Ito has employed an innovative and elegant structural system that flows between its six floors of playfully reimagined library space. In August the building was only half open to the public.
The Mediatheque itself suffered only minor damage following last March's earthquake (tsunami flood waters did not reach most of residential Sendai), but at the close of Summer employees couldn't come for their shifts–their domestic lives still being in shambles. Many people working in Sendai lost their homes to the earthquake or the resulting tsunami. At the Mediatheque, and throughout the city, a policy developed to conserve electricity–rolling blackouts threatened the Tohoku region while the damaged Fukushima power plant conducted extensive safety tests. Indoor spaces remained dark and warm through the summer.
Yet these setbacks haven't stopped a modest art exhibition from occupying the Mediatheque's lobby: Minna No Ie, or "Everybody's House," shows drawings from many ranks of Japan's post-tsunami landscape, drawings from local schoolchildren sit beside those of world-renown architects Steven Holl, Tadao Ando and Frank Gehry. Prompted by Ito, the exhibition invited illustrated thoughts on "places for people to share memories" and "houses of hope through difficulty." The exhibition is one small attempt at correcting to an exacerbated situation–offering solace to a region in many ways paralyzed by bureaucratic sluggishness and the sheer volume of work required to simply prepare to rebuild. In an environment like this, small gestures become indispensable for the resolve of the disaster victims. It's a long road ahead.
Hiromi Tabei, our intrepid liaison between Architecture for Humanity headquarters, Students Rebuild and the Japan team, recently recounted her trip to Japan in August. On the one hand, there were the festivals, the design student charrettes, the Mediatheque exhibitions...and a characteristically youthful ambition to keep moving. On the other hand, the frustrations of meeting with community and government representatives have left a very real understanding of the invisible factors impeding a timely restoration of so many people to the familiarity and security of their pre-quake lives.
Sendai Saiwai-cho Center
Across town from the wounded Mediatheque, Hiromi had her first encounter with the complications of devastation, far worse than the Mediatheque's. The 20-year-old Sendai Saiwai-cho Community Center & Youth Center suffered extensively from the earthquake. The roof is caving in. Glass blocks have fallen out and continue to be knocked loose during aftershocks, to shatter on the sidewalk. The Center had flown under the radar of Sendai's City Hall, and thus no inspections have been made or action taken.
During their stay in Sendai, Hiromi and fellow Fellow Kumiko Fujiwara (who in her spare time operates SOAT–Supporting Organization for Artists of Tohoku) saw to raising attention for the Youth Center from the City of Sendai, and pursue repairs. The two ended up leaving their pleas in a questionable status–City Hall was not immediately responsive, and the tour of Tohoku needed to continue.
Fixing things shouldn't be so hard. Students Rebuild has committed $500,000 to Japan through its Paper Cranes for Japan initiative–and private donations have more than doubled that sum. Still the Community Center turned down private funding. This is because a federal restriction prevents assistance to buildings, programs or institutions already receiving non-government aid. The result: owners of these hobbled buildings hold out for aid programs preoccupied with a failing nuclear power plant.
Inundation Zones
Tsunami-affected areas, despite their much more widespread damage, fair no better odds of receiving the federal attention withheld from Sendai. The Pacific coast through Tohoku is remote, its villages small and populations aging. A large disconnect has grown between this area that still struggles with clearing sites and the metropolitan Tokyo who largely expects reconstruction to be wrapping up.
Three hours Northeast of Sendai, only half of Rikuzen-Takata's 23,000 pre-quake inhabitants can still call the town home. Here at Headquarters, Hiromi pulls out an atlas of the Tohoku coast to show me the extent of the damage. The atlas, printed late last Spring, highlights the areas inundated by the tsunami. She sweeps her hand across downtown: "All this is gone." The village had been swept out, City Hall has vanished. And Japan has placed a moratorium on permanent construction all along the Tohoku coast.* Hiromi points to a couple bluffs, in white. "Markets have been built here." These markets are by necessity temporary: prefabricated structures with concrete block floors, no bells or whistles. )No permanent concrete foundations meets the definition of "temporary architecture.") Still, the newly-transient population needs places to shop.
All throughout Tohoku, temporary housing has sprung up to cater to the thousands of mainly families and the elderly who have nowhere else to go. These camps bear an eerie resemblance to what I've seen on my trips to Haiti–the anonymous gravel basin, the uncharacteristic row after row of fragile single-unit residences. The nonsensical jumble of people into impromptu neighborhoods. The lack of services, schools, or community spaces–and the disregard for their importance.
That's not to say conditions between Japan and Haiti are identical–you can see that each Japanese shelter is provided rigid walls and propane, a far cry from the disintegrating USAID tents still dominating the Caribbean nation (although that's changing). But unlike Haiti, Japanese shelters will have to be prepared for the winter, somehow. "It's going to be cold," Hiromi confirms. The temporary camps are slated for disassembly after two years–though similar camps set up after the 1995 Kobe earthquake were inhabited for five.
Another difference between the two affected regions are the demographics. For the Japanese disaster, the need to rebuild schools is hardly as urgent. The higher proportion of public schools means that more facilities will be guaranteed government support. What's more, Tohoku (as with the rest of Japan, to a lesser extent) has an aging population, and the pressures right now of overpopulated classrooms are much more manageable than those in Haiti. For Japan, the highest priority is housing–and the people that permanent homes can empower to return to their jobs.
Down the coast, a particular mountain of rubble is being amassed of what used to be the town of Ishinomaki. It's estimated that the tsunami created here 100 years worth of trash, and there's no infrastructure in Japan to process this much sheer MATERIAL. As part of this gargantuan effort, an estimated 1500 dump truck loads are brought to the collection site with each passing day. Crews have begun sorting out concrete, metal, and wood for potential recycling or reuse, despite the lack of clear direction how the material will enter the reuse stream.
And then there's the sludge. Every ground surface, over the floor every shop and home in the inundation zone, a layer of wet, pulpy goo has been left by the tsunami. Currently people are trying to work with the new-found resource, mixing it with concrete as an additive, for instance. No one knows what to do with the farmland turned into a barren seawatery wasteland.
A Future for Fishing
Next stop: Maeami-Hama, a typical Tohoku fishing village. Twenty or so fishermen's houses had been built on a series of terraces rising away from the water–this is the extent of the Maeami community. All but a handful of these houses have been destroyed, along with boat docks and fishing infrastructure. The village's only industry has completely shut down. Between June and August, site clearing throughout the village has proceeded at a snail's pace. This part of Tohoku is very remote and it's difficult for trucks, machinery and materials to move from place to place. By the 5th of August, however, sites in the village had finally been cleared. Now the fishermen are facing the choice of whether to build temporary structures on their old land, or re-site a permanent house farther inland and commute in...whenever the boat docks get rebuilt.
"It's a kind of chicken-and-egg thing,"Hiromi explains. At this point, the home- and business-owners are wondering whether it's even worth moving back. Suppose the Government never lifts the restriction to permanently rebuild along the coast–and the temporary housing reaches its two-year expiration date: Japan would be faced with the permanent relocation of thousands of not millions of people. The logistics of purchasing land to relocate schools, hundreds of buildings and institutions is mind-numbing. People don't know where to start. Permanent reconstruction is at a stand-still.
Urban Acupuncture
In tight situations such as this, the practice of "urban acupuncture," can bring immediate community relief within very small footprint budget constraints.
In this disaster, like any other, governments, businesses and organizations tend to make a lot of commitments, and then there's no follow through. During her trip, Hiromi repeatedly saw the impact of well-meaning architects and professors making designs and holding community charrettes that ultimately lead to nothing. The government hasn't been there recently to pick up and build projects–something the Japanese have been accustomed to since World War 2. "It's better by far to get something going on a small project, and start helping these communities right away." Make a partnership, develop a working plan, see it get built.
Take two projects in the village of Motoyoshi, 2.5 hours from Sendai. The Ooya Green Sports Park project is sited on donated land and will help a junior high school whose own athletic fields have become temporary housing. It's a simple project–a football pitch with spectator seating–but a crucial community resource. Architecture for Humanity is mobilizing funds to bring it online, and have projected completion by the end of November.
Motoyoshi, August 2011: Jr High School temporary housing; Ooya Green site plan
The Sports Park comes on the heels of the nearby Hikado Marketplace which opened in July. An outdoor deck has been built onto an existing restaurant building, inviting patrons to rediscover a community space. The deck has been assembled from salvaged materials and lumber with help from a team of shrine carpenters. The Marketplace (and host of "the hottest lunch hour in Motoyoshi") bears perhaps more significance than even its impeccable craft could lend it–and that's the point. People have been inspired.
Higashi-san, a Motoyoshi native, shares his enthusiasm: "Everybody is excited to have this community deck. This marketplace is going to become the new hub of this neighborhood. We're going to help each other to rebuild our community."
Bottom-Up or Bust
Though the Tohoku population is aging, Hiromi attests there is the overwhelming DESIRE to rebuild. That's about as much momentum that Architecture for Humanity really needs. The organization enters the scene as a grassroots catalyst, at the request of local communities to work with them to rebuild.
"The projects we finish establish a reputation that we make things happen. We're building trust with every grand opening." And getting a much larger ball on the roll. Small projects like the sports pitch and marketplace have a way of spreading the enthusiasm to other construction projects, and, against odds, structures enable life to return.
Incidentally, a couple weeks following Hiromi and Kumiko's campaign, the City of Sendai started repair work on the Sawai-cho Community Center.
*People not familiar with tsunamis may want to read this Outside magazine article. The article discusses a "sleeper fault" off the Oregon coast and explains how tsunamis work and how coastal populations tend to react. Also, recently a Youtube video circulated our office of a recording of the tsunami striking a village in Japan–warning, it's strong
Tairyou utaikomi is a folk song originated in Motoyoshi, Miyagi, where Architecture for Humanity has been working to rebuild the community. It evolved from a rhythm fishermen used to tell people on land that they had a big catch. In the days before phones and radios, banging on the boat in rhythm was the best way to communicate with land. They gradually put lyrics to it and it became a call and response folk song, sung from aboard a huge boat. Then the wives of the fishermen put a dance and a bit of theater to it and they started getting invited to places all over Japan to perform.
This video is a dress rehearsal that they had recently before a show.
Earlier this week, I had a moment to catch up with Hiromi Tabei, Architecture for Humanity’s Program Coordinator for Japan, to talk about the status of Students Rebuild’s projects in the Tohoku region. Her recent visit with community partners throughout Tohoku offers insight on how the needs of Tohoku’s young people are inspiring our rebuilding efforts in Japan.
Last year, I about wrote how Architecture for Humanity and Students Rebuild create community partnerships and select which rebuilding projects to support in Tohoku. I learned that the political landscape of reconstruction is complex in Japan: While the Japanese government welcomes support and services of voluntary groups like Students Rebuild, it often requires charities to pay for projects in their entirety. Because schools in Japan are so large and expensive, and because the Japanese government’s building standards are very strict, large NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are best suited to execute most school rebuilding efforts in Tohoku. I was left with questions like, ‘Where does that leave smaller players like Students Rebuild?’ and ‘How can Students Rebuild still help to rebuild the lives of Japanese youth?’
Zac: How does Architecture for Humanity find the right youth partners who will benefit most from its support?
Hiromi: In Japan, I think that Architecture for Humanity is better positioned to meet the needs of young people by rebuilding in smaller communities outside of big cities. In these communities, the Japanese government has fewer resources. Even modest interventions can make a big difference in the quality of life for youth and their families. Usually, the first priority of the government is to repair large pieces of infrastructure in big cities – like highways and utilities – which leaves fewer resources available for rebuilding rural livelihoods.
Zac: How does the decision to work in smaller communities impact the kind of projects Architecture for Humanity ultimately supports?
Hiromi: By working with small communities, we can talk directly with leaders and ask them to identify needs in their community. On a recent trip to Tohoku, community leaders told me that there was limited space for young people to study and socialize after school. I learned that several schools were destroyed in last March’s earthquake and tsunami, leaving students from two or even three schools to share one school – usually far from their homes. Many of the region’s libraries were also devastated, leaving students without many meeting places. For the many families who lost their homes, living in temporary government housing also means that young people often live far from their friends and relatives. This doesn’t begin to account for the everyday meeting places – the streets, the stores, the parks, the places where local kids usually meet up – that were lost in the earthquake. In that sense, rebuilding isn't just about building schools or homes, but also inspiring a renewed sense of community and belonging.
This youth and community center in Sendai was destroyed during last March's earthquake.
A classic example of temporary housing in the Tohoku region.
Zac: The Japanese government has worked hard to provide temporary community facilities for local groups to meet and discuss community efforts. Are these spaces available for young people?
Hiromi: Many locals are quick to acknowledge that adults usually dominate community space. I’m always working with village leaders and our field staff in the region to identify projects that specifically address the needs of young people. Over the last few months, communities have made youth projects a priority. On my last trip, I received several proposals for youth centers. In the past, it wasn’t like that. I’m optimistic that leaders recognize the important role of youth space in a healthy and renewed community.
Zac: What projects are on the horizon for Tohoku’s young people?
Hiromi: Right now, we’re exploring a number of possibilities, including a community and youth center and a daycare. I expect that the money raised by Paper Cranes for Japan will allow Architecture for Humanity to build two or three youth facilities in Tohoku. Each potential site has issues that they need to sort out. For now, we’ll continue to work alongside local communities to find the most beneficial projects for young people.
Local youth hang out during the final stages of construction of the Ohya Sports Green, designed by Architecture for Humanity. The previous local sports field was removed to make way for temporary housing, leaving local youth without a place to play soccer
Lending a hand laying turf
Testing the nearly-complete field
I look forward to checking back in with Hiromi in a few weeks time. For now, Hiromi and Students Rebuild are preparing for the public unveiling of the Paper Crane Installation in Sendai Train Station. The centerpiece of the installation is a beautiful sculpture featuring 100,000 of the paper cranes folded by Paper Cranes for Japan participants. In addition, dozens of young people from across Japan will converge for a 3-day workshop following the unveiling ceremony on January 13th. At the workshop, titled "Gift by Gift for a Better World," children will make gift boxes filled with your paper cranes and decorate them. These gift boxes will be sent to schools across Japan on behalf of Rebuilders across the globe.