Micro Public Space by Flux Management

The purpose of this studio is to create a public space by modulating and treating matters characterized by \’small-ness\’, \’sprouting\’ and \’flow\’, and to generate a space penetrated by public sphere, a set of rules and conventions that a place and a group of users experience. How to maintain a public space is one of the critical issues in the contemporary urban landscape in Japan. For instance in Tokyo, the urban development by private capitals is increasingly becoming a massive scale and commercialized, as if those plazas and passages taking over the role and character of public space. Such development has its own ends in the beginning, allowing no space to grow and transform itself, therefore upon its completion; becomes a peek of its potential as an urban space. Often the tendency remains as to assess its success by the numbers of people gathered there, and the consumption is what drives and enhance a public space. In this sense, it seems a disadvantage to create a public space along with a large-scale development, and it is necessary to pose a question and examine causes and motivation for the vitality in order to keep maintaining a public space. A challenge arises; is it possible to create a public space with different methods and techniques from those large-scale developments by rather focusing on smaller and fluctuating subjects?For this inquiry, the experiment is to set a point of view to observe a public space through the things that are sprouting and in a state of flux. By installing a treatment of those fluid matters, it generates a set of rules in a public space. In this dimension of a treatment, how can architectural design intervene?In the first half of studio, we are to research how public spaces are consisted in different cities, and document them in video, photographs, drawings and various formats. It is to discover a \’spatial management\’ that reflects even the direction people are facing and their posture in a space, numbers of any circulating matters from vehicular to bird frying, natural conditions, building and open-space layouts, and also a \’time management\’, and moreover to find out what kinds of program or event holds a space as a public domain. At the same time, it is to report and catalog those qualities sprouting from the specific place, and the elements invigorate a public space. The choice of research is not limited to Boston area, but world cities students are from. The other half of the studio is to design a public space or a building based on the research.