FIXES

Wooden sign on suburban shopping street reminds children not to play on the staircase. It’s dangerous.

Materials: Wooden Board, Marker
Location: Kunitachi, Tokyo

Skipping rope with one rope and two people requires an extra set of hands. A power pole stabilizing cable does the trick.

Materials: Power Pole
Location: Akishima, Tokyo

Children play camp – an upturned beer crate rocks, concrete and plants form a roaring campfire.

Materials: Beer Crate, Rocks, Concrete, Plants
Location: Tachikawa, Tokyo

Painted plate in inner-city residential street.

Materials: Paint
Location: Ueno, Tokyo

(Courtesy of Oyl in Tokyo (@oylmiller))

As noted in Deadspace Parking as BMX Training Course these income-generating asphalt plots become obstacle courses for budding and/or PRO suburban Tokyo BMXers from 12:30am onwards. Tonight as I return in the Dark Hourz I find the same man in a different coin parking space. I wonder whether he moves around to avoid detection or whether these spaces offer a valuable diversity of terrain that I have not before detected….. I need to look at those wheel clamps, judder bars and smooth asphalts more carefully.

We often decry Tokyo parking lot deadspace as an unimaginative and underused default money-making use for vacant lots but this stance exposes our own prejudices against concrete and blinds us to the diverse possibilities that the rugged terrain may offer.

Here, a half-empty suburban Tokyo pay-parking lot is the scene of a solo BMX training session in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

It is easier to record the remnants and artifacts of human(e) use of the city than it is to record use-in-action, but this example encourages me to spend more dark hours wandering the streets.

I wonder how these deadspaces by design are used when prying eyes are asleep: Deadspace by Design ONE & TWO on Tokyo Green Space.

The site in daylight:

It’s incredibly easy to hack your neighbourhood playground for competitive sports. Here, a rock and a set of swings are the required elements for the intensely competitive “Ishi-tori ge-mu” (Grab the Rock Game).

How to Play: Get a rock. Place it somewhere where you think your opponent can’t reach. When he picks it up, he does the same to you. Ad infinitum. Superb afternoon fun.

Q: What fun and camaraderie might result from creatively combining multiple mundane elements of city infrastructure?

The video after the photos shows two boys teaching their younger friend how to play. The other videos offer a brief glimpse of the game in action.

Materials: Stone, Swing
Location: Tokyo

(Originally posted on Hand Made Play)

Parking space for children’s bicycles. Bicycles locked together shows they are owned by a single family.

Location: Setagaya, Tokyo.

This example is a note for a pamphlet on “Hand Made Aspects of Mass Produced Housing”. Subscribe to my somewhat-frequent letter HERE if you want to keep in touch easily.

Traditional, semi-decommissioned blackboard for leaving messages at the train station gets new life as a playground for idle hands.

Materials: Chalk
Location: Nagoya

Plastic bamboo poles and netting are used to add height to a playground/creche fence to help prevent loose soccer shots from straying onto the road.




Materials: Netting, Plastic Pole
Location: Tachikawa, Tokyo