How can we find values and roles of designs and artworks in local communities?This assignment starts from placing students in the actual sites of town life and eciphering intentions behind creative activities found in places of daily life. Students engage in fieldwork of north Nishiogikubo area, identify observation subjects in the town, and conceptualize and plan devices or artworks belonging to a specific location (site-specific works) to understand the design process, from implementation and production to social deployment. With the cooperation of local collaborators in the selection and negotiation on artwork venues, this community-oriented design project experimentally explores artwork’s contact point with local community.
Local characters are thought to be formed by the culture specific to the locality. Through fieldworks, students collect and describe events (phenomena) that took place only because they happen to be in the place to discover ways to interact with the town through their observation subjects. Students move around the place of daily life that cannot be built by values and decisions of just one person. Through this opportunity to think, make, and interact with the subject in the real world, they explore cultural phenomena unique to the locality to find hints for the future development of local culture.
Requirements: wood (base for the work)
Project Theme: “About Building a Town, 2022”, “About Sowing seeds, 2023”
