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Summer Art, Not-School was a free programme of art activities at and around Mairangi Arts Centre (with support from the Creative Communities Scheme) during January 2016. A drop-in art space for all ages operated during opening hours, with other events popping up around the neighbourhood - construction of waterslides in public parks, bucket sculpture making in Mairangi Village, car-graffiti at the beach, drawing on the windows of a local house, and a free garage sale of creative materials. Summer Art, Not-School was part of an experiment in discovering new ways to enjoy art in our community. More details HERE |
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pamphlet about observations on frugal play with dirt and other stuff in Tokyo alternative kindergarten over a long period.
Pamphlet HERE |
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stimulus terrain for innovation processes is a space at the Idea Collective / Innovation Hub at the Museum of Transport and Technology (Auckland, New Zealand).
This is part of a "dynamic, evolving, collaborative project that celebrates New Zealand's vibrant innovation culture" by pairing five diverse New Zealand innovators with artists and designers to illuminate the activity of innovation, ideation, creation and collaboration. more details HERE |
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Small Waste Workshop (Mairangi Bay School, Auckland NZ) was an experiment in widening the margin of play in the school grounds and fosternig an environment where students can learn about waste, its possibilities, and the challenges involved in collecting and working with it. Waste resources collected in the school and community were repurposed by students in a zone of free self-building. project portal HERE |
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A small workshop for free creation, open to all who wish to use it. While based in Auckland suburbs, we have the resources of the Super City at our doorstep, harbours, beaches, mountains and rivers in our backyard, and diverse collaborators throughout the country and around the world. Website HERE |
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Lightweight tracks for cracking open adventure in sub/urban informal greenspaces in Auckland, New Zealand. Under permission of the principle of temporary, frugal, non-commercial, lightweight / no-harm local resident use. Index HERE |
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I'm pleased to be named as a trustee for my local art centre - Mairangi Arts Centre. A valuable and rare non-commercial non-sporting presence in an Auckland suburb.
MAC website HERE |
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Polymath and President of the New Government (新政府) in Kumamoto, Japan, Kyohei Sakaguchi is somethingIknownotwhat. Anyway, in correspondence with this amazing man I have been translating (rough drafts) parts of his writings as I read them so that they can be shared more widely. Expect heaps more! The evergrowing index to the translated texts is HERE |
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Video for New Government (Kyohei Sakaguchi, etc) activities for the Asian Arts Theatre Grand Opening, Zero Re: public. My translation. Glad to help out.
Video HERE |
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Monnik, based in the Netherlands, is publishing a subjective travel guide to Tokyo with the title ‘Tokyo Totem, A Mythic Field Manual to Tokyo’. I am super excited that my contribution on children and their neighbourhoods will be included in this JP/EN bilingual publication! (Scheduled for release Nov 2015). Pechakucha talk about the book HERE More about the book from Creative Industries Fund NL HERE |
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As part of our continuing making-do(ing) (also including Melanie Kueng and Eleanor Cooper) experiments in 'doing stuff with stuff' we made stuff with junk with the students of Waiotahe Valley School on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island over two days in early August 2015. It was great! Photo Set HERE |
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Invited not-sculpture for for headland Sculpture on the Gulf 2015 with Xin Cheng as part making-do(ing). From mid-Jan to mid-Feb 2015 - Waiheke Island, New Zealand "exploring the idea of the sculpture as a starting point and platform for collaborative creation and enjoyment" - project site HERE Photo Set HERE |
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Invited not-sculpture for for headland Sculpture on the Gulf 2015 with Xin Cheng as part making-do(ing) appears in a TVNZ documentary as part of a longer feature on Xin's work. View on demand HERE |
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Creative New Zealand's 2015 report on Asian Aucklanders and the Arts illustrates 'participation' with a photo from our (with Xin Cheng) making-do project with Artspace NZ. Download the PDF report HERE |
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Using Chris and Xin's research on makeshift and resourceful making as a starting point, and the kind of “design thinking” based on improvising with what is at hand and the given environment, participants will explore how assembling frugal materials together can be used to meet the practical needs of our daily lives, to transform spaces and function of things. Bring along some practical problems you’d like to solve or fix. Also, bring some light items of junk or materials from home that you’d like to be made into something else, such as broken tools, orange peels, tangles of string, bits of wood, fruit stones, pieces of wire, small fragments etc. Sunday 12 April, 11:30am and 2pm, Sustainable Living Centre, 4 Olympic Place, New Lynn (Part of Xin's Makeshift series of events Mar/Apr 2015) Photo Set HERE |
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Paper for STS Italia Conference: A Matter of Design: Making Society through Science and Technology (with Charles Walker) "This paper unpicks a thread in the everyday logic of the novelty-seeking motives of emerging collaborative environments. Through a discussion of metamorphosis and mess, and boundaries of stuff we propose an understanding of the dynamic view of knowledge and the in-formation of design (viewed as the ambiguous and inarticulate ‘doing stuff with stuff’) as ‘everyday metamorphosis’..." Download proceedings from HERE |
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(paper for DesignEd Asia Conference 2014: Action! - Doing Design Education) (with Andy M. Connor, Sangeeta Karmokar, Ben Kenobi, Stefan Marks, and Charles Walker all from AUT Colab) Text available from HERE |
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Makeshift at the Chinese New Year Festival, Mar 7 2015
“developing a shared understanding of home-made remedies” With Xin Cheng as making-do(ing) Supported by Whau Local Board |
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We traveled to the Far North to hang out with design and architecture studio AKAU and do some impromptu makings/workshops as a forerunner to their community build. Photo Set HERE |
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Feb 26-Mar 1 2015: work on a fence for the Summer Art Show at Ponsonby Central (Auckland, NZ) title: what could happen on a fence | self medication for our city | medium: mixed media x2 line text for work: “…it is a new challenge to craft not beautiful and convincing artifacts, but evocative and open-ended materials for further experimentation… to creatively set the scene for a distorted here and now” (Joachim Halse) With Xin Cheng as making-do(ing) |
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Presentation and panel discussion (Revealing Layers track) at ADA Mesh Cities Auckland Symposium 2014 SPACE : NETWORK : MEMORY, Auckland) - SEPTEMBER 2014/ |
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(Artspace, Auckland) (with Xin Cheng) - as part of our ongoing making-do public project with Artspace NZ - bits and pieces HERE |
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Invited presentation at Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University with Xin Cheng and 130 grapefruits foraged and hauled in from the North Shore of Auckland as part of our collaboration making-do(ing) |
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Games Afternoon at RM (as part of making-do(ing) with Xin Cheng and Sense Pleasures of a Super City course among others) offered up a range of research artifacts as playthings from Cambodian slums, Auckland sub/urban zones, the Tokyo megaregion and more. Fluid game dynamics and warm-hearted late afternoon sustenance provided footholds for experimentation in psychological mapping, conversation, gift giving, ad-hoc archiving, and leveraging the memories of others. More Details HERE |
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A series of neighbourhood pancake trolley rounds and stalls for October Kai Auckland Community Meals week - More Details |
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Running a studio project for second year students at Elam School of Fine Arts (University of Auckland). It's about things like lived experience of the city, storytelling and documenting, design as a tool for inspiring people and opening up terrains of investigation, at least.
Project site HERE; Project overview HERE; Resources HERE etc |
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We were invited by Auckland City Council to work on concept designs for James Watson Reserve in South Auckland, New Zealand. Project members: Xin Cheng, Eleanor Cooper, Chris Berthelsen More details, documentation, research and concept design on the project sketchbook HERE |
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making-do publication Chris Berthelsen, Xin Cheng With Contributions by companions: Emma Cowan and Joseph McGregor, Harriet Stockman, Ophelia Mikkelson, Jacob Barratt-Boyes, Cameron Rey, Jahnne Pasco-White Supported by Artspace, NZ Launching Saturday July 19, 12 - 5pm At the Auckland Zinefest Auckland Old Folks Association, 8 Gundry St, Newton, Auckland Available for a non-monetary exchange More details on the Artspace website HERE and Zinefest website HERE |
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With Xin Cheng for Distracted-Workshop at 26th International Biennial of Graphic Design Brno 2014, Czech Republic) More details, documentation, and sketcbook HERE |
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All day workshop with Xin Cheng for Auckland University of Technology second-year art students, on the theme of wide ranging research, and trans/inter-disciplinarity Photos from the workshop here HERE |
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A workshop with the very inspiring Xin Cheng, supported by Artspace. Friday May 9 from 11:30 to approximately 14:00, rain or shine Meet at Artspace (Education Room) Free In the making do workshop we will savour the simple pleasures of practical experimentation with resources at hand and the environment as given. After a brief clearing of the ground in the Artspace Education Room the workshop will head outdoors and potter around the inner-city with a trolley of full of tools and junk. In the process we will not be afraid to follow our interests. More details on the Artspace website HERE |
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A project with the very inspiring Xin Cheng, supported by Artspace. “ Having a conversation with the junk of a City of Riches feels surprisingly cosy. And inspires intense concentration. With a makeshift trolley of tools and resources in tow, Xin Cheng, Chris Berthelsen and companions become hypnotized by the fine-grain of Auckland’s native wetlands, urban industrial zones and sub/urban deathtraps. Over a series of walks they begin to work out how to come to terms with the Super City in a pragmatic, generative, and non-goal-oriented manner. ” making do by Xin Cheng, Chris Berthelsen and companions might concern: circumstances and eddies, niches and leftovers, material intrigue, spontaneous constructions and rearrangements, sustenance and pleasures of the senses. at least. Sketchbook and more details HERE |
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Very nice to see my edition of the Kanto Tour Guide published by the fantastic Shibaura House (top row, second from right). |
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A document of how primary school children interact with their environment on a beach walk along a volcanic shoreline in Auckland, New Zealand. I am inspired by the ways that children find relaxation and comfort, joy, frustration, challenge and creative outlets in working and interacting with everyday materials on a beach walk. I’m interested in how this frugal and unremarkable loose association, improvisation, functional reuse and problem-solving can inform and provoke our thinking about school and learning environments. Details/Downloads HERE |
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Repository and blog for collaboration with Mairangi Bay School - a small-ish primary school with high education standards located on Auckland's North Shore (New Zealand). Project Site: HERE |
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During Ecofest North 2014 I am hosting a series of casual morning teas about collaborative and non-commercial food practices in the past, present and future of the East Coast Bays (Auckland, NZ). More details HERE |
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A discussion document about building for creativity. Produced in programming stages for an innovation center in Japan. For Van Der Architects View and download on Slideshare or on Scribd. |
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A document of play and loose parts at a suburban Tokyo kindergarten. Part of the "with Akishima Kindergarten" project. View and download HERE |
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I'm delighted to be included in Volume 2 of Enabling City, a publication that highlights projects and people that enhance creative community resilience. I also contributed several examples from Japan to the book. View and download the book HERE. |
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A few years ago I won a prize in this design competition with a drawing of
this "cat puncher". The other day I collaborated with a local occupational rehabilitation store to produce a limited edition embroidered t-shirt. View more images HERE |
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The first iOS app for Mammoth School, a part of respected independent Tokyo-based publisher Knee High Media Japan.
I searched for and secured the collaboration of a highly talented iOS developer, and stayed with the small development team (company founder, developer, me) through to the completion of the app. Download from the app store HERE (in Japanese) |
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I was asked to contribute to the In Context section of MAS Context, a quarterly journal created by MAS Studio, that addresses issues that affect the urban context.
My piece sketches "through previous editions to divine points of meaning. Trying to grasp what more lucid minds behold"… READ IT HERE |
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"Yuk Hui urges us to be archivists instead of users, and reminds us that care, preserving and giving, need to be key aspects of our archive culture. We agree, and further promote Dumpster Diving in our everincreasing flotsam archives and hardware trash in the pursuit of small dataspaces of anarchy that offer real human(e) agency… [Continue Reading]" |
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UPDATE:The S.C.R.O.T.U.M. intervention "Making Friends" has been accepted to the Artifacts section of EPIC 2013 London - "EPIC is the premier international gathering on the current and future practice of ethnography in the business world." Our artifact is a storyboard that documents a research interaction and illustrates human evolution in approaching the unexpected in shared public spaces. Making Friends was a true, inter-species encounter in the Tokyo Metro. Click to enlarge image. |
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Contribution to the Farming the City book, produced and edited by CITIES. "..[A] great piece of analysis with a wonderful take on the role and potential of fruit in the urban metabolism" say the editors. > Photos and details HERE |
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A project looking at parks in a western Tokyo suburb. Log of submissions HERE |
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にわとりはとても気持ちの良い研究「相手」 / 「対象物」です! 10分間の研究を見ましょう! ダウンロード(PDF, 1.5MB)はこちらへ View on Slideshare こちらへ Chickens are delightful research partners / subjects! Let's take a look at a 10 minute research project! Download (PDF, 1.5MB) HERE View on Slideshare HERE |
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"Understanding fruit layers can help make urban life more social, resilient and delicious" - A short text we prepared for the LIMNO Collabora on stratification, nature, and landscapes. Download the PDF (15MB)HERE |
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"Welcoming real and mythical urban animals expands ideas of adaptability past spatial, structural and service strategies that focus on the physical artefact, showing a way for considering how microspaces, pleasures, pranks and human/non-human relationships can inform thinking about urban environments design." > Read the full article on This Big City > "Tokyo Tanuki: Apprendre par l’observation des animaux mythiques urbains" en francais > "El Tanuki de Tokio: aprendiendo de un animal urbano, un mito y una realidad." en Espagnol |
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Urban experiments for the Studio for Creative Revitalization Of Tanuki Urban Manifestations (S.C.R.O.T.U.M.)
> Check Tokyo Green Space for recent inter-species interventions HERE > Project Page = Studio.C.R.O.T.U.M. |
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The Studio for Creative Revitalization Of Tanuki Urban Manifestations works with the Tanuki - a member of the canine family that resembles a raccoon (commonly known as raccoon dog in English). In addition to being a real animal that resides in the nooks and crannies of Tokyo alleyways and shrines it is also a pleasure-seeking and massively testicled mythical figure central to Japanese folklore and popular culture.
A collaboration with Jared Braiterman and Jess Mantell. Work, sketches and resources are on the Studio.C.R.O.T.U.M. Page |
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The Japanese language version of a text we prepared for the LIMNO Collabora on stratification, nature, and landscapes. To be published soon. 東京のカジュアルな都市農業は、機能性・実用性・技術だけの問題ではない。果物のある都市風景は暖かい人間性にあふれている。東京には果物生産の中心になれる大きな可能性がある。 フルテキストは こちら |
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A small story and images about fruit in Tokyo. Delectable codescapes; DRM-infused code candies; Industrial juices and code snippets; A city of dog turds and plastic bags..... Rich, dark soils in rotting tatami mats.... Teletechnologies of generalised taste VS Resilient and distributed asynchronous economies of mutual reciprocity. Read it at Tokyo DIY Gardening.org |
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"......These safe and slow pathways are perfect for tiny feet and their larger commute-weary companions. Dense greens and colourful scented collages reside at the height and scale of little eyes and noses. Irrepressible hands thrive on the mixture of gravel, sand, grass, rocks, sticks and fallen fruit that compose Tokyo carpets. In summer developing ears drink in crickets, cicadas and neighbourhood rustlings...." A small study on the child's perception of the street. This document traces the everyday treasures of a rainy day walk to the local sento in suburban Tokyo. It is part of a broader and slightly wonky research and practice agenda on the hand made, everyday creativity, play, and usable environments. Extracts, Full Download, etc [HERE] |
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Produced in collaboration with Mammoth School and Knee High Media for the fourth issue of the Mammoth School free paper, "Dots and Nets" builds on the traditional dots and squares game to introduce creatures of the sea. Illustrated by Mika Inohara. Details and video [HERE] |
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Notes from a collaborative + open research project investigating, enjoying, and learning from the self-initiated and non-commercial play of children in Tokyo. > http://a-small-lab.com/hand-made-play/ |
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A public project looking at non-commercial fruit in Tokyo private gardens and public spaces. We hope to learn about what is being grown, where, and how it is being enjoyed and shared - the simple, everyday tastes, stories and memories of fruit in Tokyo. > A collaboration with Jared Braiterman and Jess Mantell. > We presented this project at the Pechakucha Global Cities Week (Tokyo) on Feb 23 [HERE] - and you can view the UStream [HERE] > Parts of this project will be published in ALL YOU CAN EAT! - a book about using food as a tool for urban development - [HERE] (when they find a publisher). View the PROJECT PAGE |
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New post on This Big City [HERE] |
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Turning an unusable and unfriendly suburban jungle/rubbish dump into a usable space for children, plants and parents. > View progress [on Flickr] |
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> HAPPY DUTCH WORKSHOP x WA WA PROJECT: Dutch house making workshop / Dutch tulips & coloring journal in collaboration with Tanemaki Project [HERE]. > TULIP JOURNAL in collaboration with Tanemaki Project [HERE]. Both of these in collaboration with the great Hiyoko Imai and Jared Braiterman |
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Notes and a few projects for a guest lecture at Dr. Christian Dimmer's Public/Private Seminar, Waseda University (Nov. 16, 2011) Download/Viewing Options [HERE] |
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This ongoing study reviews the Japanese business and management literature to uncover the principles, strategies and circumstances at the heart of the creative successes of Japanese companies. NEW: Page Samples and Exercises from forthcoming book [LINK] Project Resource[LINK to Project Resource] |
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Tokyo colour-in. The colouring-in book of Tokyo street art (180p) A colouring-in book of Tokyo street art created to introduce little hands and minds to the fine-grained hand made aspect of human(e) creativity on the street. Take a look at the preview [HERE] and check the slowly growing set of activities for use with the book [HERE] |
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Produced in collaboration with Mammoth School and Knee High Media for the third issue of the Mammoth School free paper, "Amidakuji" builds on a traditional Japanese game for fun and weird storytelling. Illustrated by the fantastic Hiyoko Imai. Downloads and video [HERE] |
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I'm honoured to be a guest speaker at, and have my research included in the syllabus for Mega-Cities: Design Anthropology and Urban Landscapes, a Tokyo University graduate seminar on mega-cities taught by Jared Braiterman. My FIXES research is part of the syllabus. |
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Lots of preview images of the Hand Made Tokyo document of the 3331 Arts CYD Tokyo mapping workshop we did last summer. A5, 126 pages Take a look at the preview [HERE] |
A scrambled, semi-off-the-cuff presentation for the Institute for Information Design Japan workshop “Transforming Neighbourhoods - Tokyo/Berlin" organised by Jan Lindenberg. View the presentation On Slideshare View the presentation: On Scribd |
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Produced in collaboration with Mammoth School and Knee High Media for the second issue of the Mammoth School free paper, "Look-A-Round" is a board game which encourages learning about city accessibility. View video, photos, and download [HERE] |
A resource, a toolkit, of rare images of the structures and textures of the gradually decaying city of Nagoya, Japan (735 images) This image resource is available for purchase for commercial (no use restrictions) and non-commerical use - Click here for more details. |
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The kokonohanashi (「ここの話」 lit. 'talking about here') project works locally with a combination of analogue (notebooks, pens, laminated A4 posters, wire, legwork) and open low-tech digital tools (QR codes, stripped down Wordpress, email, smart-and-not-so-smart-phones) to investigate the development of a platform for discussion about, and positive action in, city space by the people who most matter - those who experience and use the place in their everyday lives. View the project page: [Kokonohanashi Project] Download the project introduction: [PDF file, 5.5mb] Download a brief project report after the first iteration: [PDF file, 3mb] Read a nice write up of the project at Tokyo Green Space [HERE] |
A photo resource and book was made for a major Japanese clothing design/retail company (800+ photos, book, context/translation). Take a look at a couple of photos here [LINK] |