University Supported Machizukuri Experimentations
Résumé
Machizukuri's experimentations lead by Shigeru Satoh in his laboratory at Waseda University represent an interesting sample of a collaboration between inhabitant's organisations and the university. Those experimentations are the product of a bottom-up inclination of the Japanese society and the influence of oversea's experimentations. The case study chosen is the renewal of a wooden houses neighbourhood in the north of Shinjuku, Tokyo after a large earthquake. Satoh's laboratory is invited by an inhabitant's association, as we can easily find in Japanese urban areas. The experimentation is based on a serie of workshops in which inhabitants are involved, organised by the graduate students. These are original frames for students to use the tools of the architect such as mapping, sketching and spatialisation to draw the future of a neighbourhood. Architects and moreover students in architecture can bring their own expertise to a community. This new function, close to advocacy planners in the USA, can be seen as unexplored opportunities for architects to get into the debate about urban landscape preservation.