Building from the Post-Apocalyptic Land
‘... and all that was bright then turned into darkness. [He] charged the land like a bull [on the rampage,] he smashed [it] in pieces [like a vessel of clay.] ‘For a day the gale [winds flattened the country,] quickly they blew, and [then came] the [Deluge.] Like a battle [the cataclysm] passed over the people. One man could not discern another, nor could people be recognized amid the destruction. ‘Even the gods took fright at the Deluge, they left and went up to the heaven of Anu, lying like dogs curled up in the open. The goddess cried out like a woman in childbirth, Belet-ili wailed, whose voice is so sweet: ... ‘For six days and [seven] nights, there blew the wind, the downpour, the gale, the Deluge, it flattened the land. ‘But the seventh day when it came, the gale relented, the Deluge ended. The ocean grew calm, that had thrashed like a woman in labour, the tempest grew still, the Deluge ended. ‘I looked at the weather, it was quiet and still, but all the people had turned to clay. The flood plain was flat like the roof of a house. I opened a vent, on my cheeks fell the sunlight. ‘Down sat I, I knelt and I wept, down my cheeks the tears were coursing,
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I scanned the horizons, the edge of the ocean, in fourteen places there rose an island. ‘On the mountain of Nimush the boat ran aground, Mount Nimush held the boat fast, allowed it no motion. One day and a second, Mount Nimush held the boat fast, allowed it no motion, a third day and a fourth, Mount Nimush held the boat fast, allowed it no motion, a fifth day and a sixth, Mount Nimush held the boat fast, allowed it no motion. ‘The seventh day when it came, I brought out a dove, I let it lose: off went the dove but then it returned, there was no place to land, so back it came to me. I brought out a swallow, I let it loose: off went the swallow but then it returned, there was no place to land, so back it came to me. ‘I brought out a raven, I let it loose: off went the raven, it saw the waters receding, finding food, bowing and bobbing, it did not come back to me. ‘I brought out an offering, to the four winds made sacrifice, incense I placed on the peak of the mountain. Seven flasks and seven I set in position, reed, cedar and myrtle I piled beneath them. -- The Epic of Gilgamesh (2000 - 1500 BC) translated by Andrew George
The tablet eleven of The Epic of Gilgamesh from ancient Mesopotamia is the earliest depiction we know about apocalypse and post-apocalyptic landscape.
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Yang Yang
Political Architecture: Critical Sustainability
stud 5616
Tutor: Niels GrønbÌk
Spring 2016 tel: +45 50315014 email: yangyang.kadk@gmail.com
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CONTENT
INTRODUCTION
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CONTEXT Natural Disasters in Japan
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Minamihama in Ishinomaki
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Post-Apocalyptic Landscape as Building Material Incubator
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Tsunami as Recurring Events
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Farming as a Hobby
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PROPOSITION Proposal
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Production of Architecture as Part of Architecture
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Ups and Downs Landscape
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Reciprocally Affected Cycles
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Bond Stimulation
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PRELIMINARY STUDY
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
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INTRODUCTION
The project is rooted in the field trip to the north-east coast of Japan, where the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake (the Great East Japan Earthquake) and the subsequent tsunami had hit and caused great damages. The natural disasters have an enduring impact on both the land and the society. Traces of the disasters are still palpable when we visited five years after the events. The field trip investigated not only the earthquake, and tsunami happened in 2011, but also the recovering process of the cities and the people within the past five years. The architectural proposal is situated on a unique post-apocalyptic landscape at Minamihama where most of the man-made structures had been wiped out by the tsunami. Starting from studies of materialities, the project explores the iterative dialogue between architecture and the making of architecture, the specific site and the city, and as a result, to investigate the reciprocal influences between nature and the man-made, landscape and architecture.
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Erimo
Miyako Kamaishi Ofunato
Ishinomaki Soma
Epicenter of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake
Onahama Oarai
^ Cities experienced the highest tsunami wave in the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake
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CONTEXT Natural Disasters in Japan
Japan is a country facing the threat of frequent natural disasters. The socalled Pacific Ring of Fire runs right through the country. The Pacific Ring of Fire is a narrow zone around the Pacific Ocean where around 90 percent of all the world’s earthquakes and 80 percent of the largest volcanic eruptions occur. The Archepaleogo of Japan perches on the fault line of four tectonic plates, which are the Pacific, North American, Eurasian and Filipino plates. These massive slabs of earth’s crust are endlessly creeping, slipping, locking up and then jolting again. The power of the moving tectonic plates accumulates. When the stored power traverses a certain threshold, it releases suddenly and results in an earthquake. Earthquakes often trigger tsunamis. Tsunami waves do not resemble normal sea waves. Rather than appearing as a breaking wave, a tsunami may instead initially resemble a rapidly rising tide. Tsunami is dangerous not only because of its wave height but also because of its high speed. Some tsunamis cause great damages even if their waves do not appear to be large. People’s knowledge of tsunami is very limited. The reason that some large earthquakes do not generate tsunamis while other smaller ones do remains unknown. In the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, the most recent great earthquake in Japan, the tsunami caused much more damages than the earthquake itself. Four years after the earthquake, the cities destroyed by the earthquake but spared by the following tsunami have almost been rebuilt. However, the Japanese government estimates that the cities hit by the tsunami, need ten to fifteen years, even up to forty years, to recover. The cities which experienced the highest wave are marked on the map, including Ishinomaki, the city where the site of investigation is located.
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^ The identity of Minamihama is blurred after being hit by the tsunami (in the context of Ishinomaki city).
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^ Minamihama before 2011 Tsunami from Google Earth
^ Minamihama after 2011 Tsunami from Google Earth
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CONTEXT Minamihama in Ishinomaki The Coastal Flatland Wiped out by the 2011 East Japan Tsunami
On March 11, 2011, at 14:46 (local time), a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck north-east Japan, at 38.3o N, 142.4o E. At 14:49, people lived at Minamihama received a tsunami warning of anticipated 6 metres wave. At 15:14, another tsunami warning was released and the anticipated wave height had been raised to 10 metres. At 15:26, the first wave of tsunami struck Minamihama coast. Around 400 people died at Minamihama. Almost all the buildings at Minamihama was destroyed. And around 1700 people evacuated to the stadium of a local high school. All these survivors had lost their home in the disaster. The government relocated these people to temporary housings or public housings at other places of the city afterwards and stated Minamihama as an uninhabitable place. People inhabited Minamihama since long ago. From an 18th century drawing of Ishinomaki, the temples and shrines that we could see today had already been built at the place. While the centre of Ishinomaki was under rapid growth during the 1920s to 1940s, Minamihama remained as a lowdensity district, but with diverse land usage. There was temples, shrines, fish market, boat factory, schools, public housings, racecourse, beaches, woods, railway and most of all rice pads and wetlands. After the late 1960s when the nearby industrial harbor was built, the density of Minamihama increased quickly. People who worked at the industrial harbor started to move to Minamihama to build their houses. Rice farms, wetlands, woods, racecourse, beach, fish market and railway had disappeared. The big bridge that connects the industrial harbor and the other side of the river was built at the seaside. And eventually, Minamihama became a dense residential district as we could see before the 2011 Tsunami.
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05/06/2010
12/03/2011
06/04/2011
08/02/2012
01/04/2014
01/06/2015
^ The formation of the post-apocalyptic pond and its associated eco-system.
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CONTEXT Post-Apocalyptic Landscape as Building Material Incubator
At the east edge of Minamihama, next to a small harbour, the 2011 earthquake and tsunami had created a small pond on the site of a previously parking lot. The earthquake squeezed and sunk the land while the subsequent tsunami brought sea water into it. Because of the mild climate of Japan, the pond still exists five years after its formation. As a “creation” of the earthquake and the tsunami, the pond had built up its own micro eco-system. “It was a sunny afternoon.The gentle sea breeze from the harbour was making ripples on the surface of the little pond. Moving closer to the pond, there was another layer of ripples, circular ripples, caused by some insects moving and jumping on the surface of the water. From time to time, there were fish jumping out of the water, chasing plankton. A heron was deeply hiding in the middle of the reeds, staring at the fish and waiting for the perfect timing to prey. The light is getting dim. Dusk was falling rapidly. A cat marched close to the pond and drank water from it. The only thing reminded me the civilized past of the place is an abandoned fridge resting on the bank and the tiny island in the centre of the pond with distorted white rectangle marks indicating that there had been a car park.” (from fieldnotes Oct. 2015) The most noticeable element within this micro eco-system is the reed growing on the periphery of the water. As a traditional construction material, reed is used to build thatched roof in Japan. There are three thatched roof materials in Japan. They are Yamakaya, Susuki and Yoshi. What is growing around the pond is Yoshi, Latin name as Phragmites Australis. As a mix of sea water and rain water, the pond cultivates the best reed as building material, since it gives the reed straight and strong stem. It is a potential opportunity of the post-apocalyptic landscape to cultivate building materials, not limited to reed.
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Tsunamis Hit North-East Japan in the History Date and Wave Height
Jul. 9. 869
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5m - 6m
Dec.2. 1611
3m - 10m
Feb. 17. 1793
3m - 5m
Jun. 15. 1896
3m - 10m above
Aug. 5. 1897
1m - 3m
Mar. 3. 1933
3m - 10m above
May. 24. 1960
2m - 6m
Mar. 11. 2011
9.3m above
next tsunami ?
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CONTEXT Tsunami as Recurring Events
Tsunamis have always been the predominant nature disatser for the coastal flatlands in Japan. The earliest record of tsunami in Japan dates back to November 29, 684 AD, the tsunami followed the Great Hakuho Earthquake, that hit the shore of Kii Peninsula, Nankaido, Shikoku and Awaji in Kansai area. Many coastal towns had been destroyed by tsunamis and rebuilt many times. Take Onagawa, the small town near Ishinomaki for example. Since its establishment in 1923, it has been severely damaged by the 1933 Sanriku Tsunami, the 1960 Great Chilean Tsunami and the 2011 East Japan Tsunami. It is now undergoing its third reconstruction. The Japanese government has devided tsunamis into two catagories, Level 1 tsunamis and Level 2 tsunamis. Level 1 tsunamis are events with a return period of several decades to slightly over 100 years. These tsunamis would generate relatively shallow inundation depths, typically less than 7-10 m. Level 2 tsunamis are events that are considered far rarer, typically taking place at intervals between every few hundred and a few thousand years. The tsunami inundation depths would be much larger, typically over 10 m, some times could reaching 20-30 m. The 2011 East Japan Tsunamis falls into this category. After the huge lost at Minamihama in the 2011 East Japan Tsunami, the local government of Ishinomaki had marked Minamihama as uninhabitable. That is to say, no recidencial projects are allowed to be build at Minamihama in the future. Minamihama is left there, waiting for an anticipated tsunami whose actual arrival time still remains unpredictable.
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^ A suburban house in America
^ A suburban house in Japan
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CONTEXT Farming as a Hobby
Unlike the stereotype of Amerian suburban house surrounded by a garden with lawn and flowers, the suburban houses in Japan are always surrounded by a little plantation. The Japanese love to grow vegetables in their yards. They don’t live by selling the vegetables. The harvest may not be even sufficient for the people themselves to eat. They may still need to buy vegetables in supermarkets. However, they love to eat vegetable that they grow by themselves in their own yard. A presumptuous guess of the reason for this phenomenon is the profound agricultural tradition of the country and the contrast of dense population and lack of arable land. In this matter, the Japanese are pragmatic people. “Close to the pond, there was a little plantation. The farmer was an old man who drove a small Nissan to the place every morning, to take care of the vegetables that he had planted on the land where once had been a clinic and an apartment building. He had grown beetroots, eggplants, red peppers, persimmons, green onions, sunflowers, taro roots, yams, okra, spinaches, carrots, white radishes, chives, cabbages and green peppers. He came to sow, to place fertilizer and sometimes to harvest.” (from fieldnotes Oct. 2015) The old man drove to farm at the place. That is to say, he doesn’t live very close, maybe in the Ishinomaki city centre or even further. The place wasn’t a residential building. That is to say, he wasn’t farming at a land that belonged to him. What drove him to the place was simply his interest of growing vegetables and his intrinsic pity feeling of a land that was left wasted. Within this context of the deeply rooted backyard plantation culture in Japan, it is possible to make the inference that more people may spontaneously come to build their own little plantation at the wasteland of Minamihama.
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^ The old man’s little plantation on the post-apocalyptic landscape
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Beetroot
Eggplant
Red Pepper
Persimmon
Green Onion
Sunflower
Taro Root
Yams
^ Plants from the old man’s little plantation.
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Okra
Cauliflower
Spinach
Carrot
White Raddish
Chives
Cabbage
Green Pepper
Plants from the old man’s little plantation. ^
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lan
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t r u c ti o n
architectur
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cape s d
m a t e ri
al
The project oscillates among the infinitive co-evolution of landscape formation, material exploration, architecture design and construction techniques.
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PROPOSITION Proposal
An architecture built from the post-apocalyptic landscape and a building material productive landscape as an integrated part of the architecture. Inspired by the reed beds spontaneously growing on the land, this project starts with studying the Japanese thatching techniques. To further explore the land’s potential for producing building materials, the project will also try to produce and build with other building materials. According to a preliminary study of the construction of traditional Japanese cult signs, the materials to be tested include but will not be limited to: different kinds of bamboo, rice (rice straw as a raw material for making ropes), rape, and cedar. Building from the post-apocalyptic landscape, the architecture grows with the transformation of the landscape, forms as a concentrate of the landscape, and simultaneously alters the landscape. The landscape and the architecture are built for as well as built by the estimated people who come to cultivate their little vegetable plantation on this wasteland of Minamihama which had been marked by the local government as uninhabitable. Initial programming includes: Landscape
- landscape as vegetable plantations - landscape as building material incubator
Architecture
- Facilities for the people who come to grow vegetables i.e. toilet, kitchen, dining place, vegetable storage - An outdoor stage for Noh performance people play Noh to celebrate harvest as a local tradition - A gathering space for builders and tourists
Among all the bottom-up tactics of the investigation, a top-down system of hazard evacuation will be placed first as an infrastructure on the site. 26
^ Santa Familia at Barcelona, Cranes are as iconic as the towers in the cityscape.
^ GuĂŠdelon Castle in France, as an experinmental archeology project, the simulated middle age construction process attracts tourists visiting the uncompleted castle.
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PROPOSITION Production of Architecture as Part of Architecture
After generations of living in the city, we are accustomed to live in places that are isolated from their production procedures. The users and the builders aren’t the same people; The building materials are produced at a different place. We’ve been living in “final product” buildings without knowing their origins and their stories. With the ongoing trend of prefabricated architecture, even the construction procedures are deprived from the site. The buildings are “half-done” in the factories and transported and assembled at the place where the “dwelling” actually take place. This site specific project aims to test an alternative that spatially incorporates the production procedure of building as part of the place making, challenging the “tradition” of the separation of living in a building and the making of the architecture. So as the “process” of making an architecture becomes as present as the “product” of an architecture. The project oscillates between landscape interpretation and architecture interpretation, experimenting a spatial integration from the production of building materials, to the construction work and finally to the living. The potential of the post-apocalyptic landscape as building material incubator gives us this opportunity to develop a way of “dwelling” that belongs particularly to Minamihama where the production of architecture plays a crucial part of the architecture. The architecture is in this sense built both from the land and on the land.
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PROPOSITION Ups and Downs Landscape
When the tsunami hit Ishinomaki in 2011, most areas of the city were flooded. However the hill that sits at the north of Minamihama was left as an island. Therefore, although the buildings in Minamihama was mostly wiped out by the tsunami, many people ran up to the hill and saved their lives. The hill was like the boat in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Considering another tsunami is going to hit Minamihama at some point in the future, an evacuation strategy shall be adopted. In this case, I propose a set of highlands that are higher than the tsunami wave height as evacuation points. Within a particular walking distance, the highlands shall cover the entire site. Thus, wherever on the site the people are when the tsunami comes, they could run to a safe height within a certain time. As a counterpart of constructing the artificial highlands, artificial water territories are to be formed at the same time. The soil that piles up the highlands comes from the digging of the water areas. Like the postapocalyptic pond at the edge of the site where reed grows, the water territories will be the engines of landscape of cultivating building materials. The pairs of highlands and water territories form an “ups and downs landscape� which alter the vulnerable flatness of this coastal land. The ups and downs landscape is placed as a base layer on the site through a top-down strategy. It is not gradually built by the inhabitants but is provided, as an infrastructure. The landscape of building material production and the landscape of the little vegetable plantations are superimposed onto this base layer. These two superimposed layers together reform and enrich the ups and downs landscape that placed firstly on the site.
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^ Simulated flooded areas in Ishinomaki when the 2011 East Japan Tsunami hit.
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Strategy of Placing Highlands According to the Japan Meteorological Agency there were only about 4 minutes between the earthquake and the initial tsunami arrival at the observation buoy just off the coast of Kamaishi. Assuming the estimated arrival time is correct (i.e. it took another 5 minutes for the wave to travel from the buoy to the coast), that would give them somewhere between 9 to 24 minutes between the earthquake and the arrival of the tsunami. Assuming that the earthquake time reported is the time at which the JMA became aware that there was an earthquake occurring, taking into consideration that it takes at least 3 minutes to issue a forecast and assuming that this time is when people in the affected areas actually receive the tsunami warning, it leaves only 6 to 21 minutes for people to get to high ground. Naismith’s rule Allow 1 hour for every 5 kilometres (3.1 mile) forward, plus 1 hour for every 600 metres (2,000 ft) of ascent. When walking in groups, calculate for the speed of the slowest person. 1 minute for 10 metres ascent 1 minute for 84 metres forward Within 6 minutes, people need to climb at least 20 metres high, therefore it leaves people 4 minutes to reach the foot of the hills. Within 4 minutes, people could walk 336 metres, as people have to take detours when moving on the road grid, let’s assume the safe diststance between where people stand and the nearest hill is 200 metres. So the entire site shall be covered by hills within 200 metres radius and maximum 400 metres between the hills. Therefore, 12 artificial hills should be placed on this specific site to cover the entire site within 200 metres escape distance.
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^ Centres of the circles as estimated locations of highlands.
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PROPOSITION Reciprocally Affected Cycles
In this time-based thematic, the project intends to bring the essential cycles on the site into an integrated system that evolutes as a whole. The cycles are: landscape reformation, seasons change, building material growing patterns (reed, rice, bamboo, rape, cedar etc.), vegetable cultivation rhythm, building material preparation and storage, building construction process, building decay, building reconstruction, the way that people inhabit the architecture, the demographical change of the inhabitants... The change of each cycle has impact on other cycles, and eventually the impact transmits to the cycle that changed at the first place. As a result, the entire system on the site moves to another stage. Some cycles under discussion here are quite transient, and some others have long time spans. Though reed is perennial herb, it could be harvest every year. That is to say, the cycle of thatch production is one-year. Thatched buildings are to be renovated every 15 to 30 years. That is to say, the cycle of the decay is 15 to 30 years. Although it takes 5 to 7 years for the bamboos to be used as construction materials, a bamboo structure can last up to 200 years. As for cedar, it takes 20 years for them to grow large trunks. For an architecture that requires renovation, or an architecture that is built in different phases, the building materials may change to a different kind when it is under construction, and another type of material happens to be ready to use. As a result, as the “concentrate� of the landscape, the architecture transforms with the cycles of the building material cultivation.
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^ Villagers of Shirakawago (in central Japan) pulling up a cultic sign together.
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PROPOSITION Bond Stimulation
Minamihama is a district with incredibly rich history and story. It was mostly covered with suburban houses before it has been hit by the 2011 East Japan Tsunami. After the tsunami has removed nearly all the buildings, the evacuees were relocated to temporary housings at Kaisei and Minamizakai districts of Ishinomaki city and recently built public housings at Nakazato district. Since the local government had identified Minamihama as hazardous and uninhabitable place after the tsunami, the former residents are not allowed to move back and live on their land anymore, even though by Japanese law, the land still permanently belongs to these people. The project assumes that there are certain bonds of the place, physically and emotionally, between the people and the land, and between the people themselves. However, these bonds are now hidden and can not be sensed under existing condition. Based on the presumption that the bonds are always there, though currently concealed, the project could, through certain architectural interpretation, stimulate the bonds, unfold them and bring them back to former prosperous state. This ambition could be approached in two ways, providing space that has communal quality, or adopting a construction method that requires collaborative work, like the cultic sign that couldn’t be completed without the villagers pulling it up together. The cultic signs of Shito are built by binding bundles of primitive materials and tying ropes, completely by hand. Working by hand is psychologically considered as a mentally constructive activity. Once upon a time, making by hand was the only way of making architecture. Through repetitive body movement, mental status could be improved. Therefore, a construction method of collaboratively working by hand is expected to work also as a bond stimulator. And the unique way of construction may eventually become an alternative form of memorial of the land and the people. 38
^ Map of Minamihama before tsunami with family names marked on the residential places.
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The foundations of the houses are left on the land, but nature has taken over the territory. ^
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PRELIMINARY STUDY Reconstructing a Cult Sign in Central Japan Villages 1 to 10 Column Style Materials Used in Real Construction Reed Rape Rope Bamboo Splinter Wood
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PRELIMINARY STUDY Reconstructing a Cult Sign in Central Japan Villages 1 to 10 Fixed Cult Sign Materials Used in Real Construction Reed Rape Rope Sasatake (A low-growing species of Bamboo) Bamboo Splinter Cedar Pole Cult Rope
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^ Cult signs in front of a shrine at the edge of woods, in Kurahashibe, Japan.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS Nold Egenter, Architectural Anthropology: Semantic and Symbolic Architecture, Structura Mundi, 1994 Shiralawa-go Education Commission, The Construction of Gassho-style Houses, A Record of Traditional Techniques in Shirakawa-go, KMS, 1995 WEBSITES https://www.facebook.com/eiennominamihama. kadonowaki
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Thesis Programme by Yang Yang
Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademis Skoler for Arkitektur, Design og Konservering