SHIBUYA! The Graduate Students of Harvard Think about Shibuya in Ten Years

Kayoko Ota and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design

In 2016, the GSD students who chose to spend the fall semester in Tokyo on the studio abroad program worked on the future of bustling Shibuya in Tokyo, while also working on the shrinking island Omishima with Toyo Ito. While having a variety of urban characteristics tied to youth culture, the famous downtown is also in a process of massive redevelopment towards redefining itself in 10 years. The students looked at the ongoing transformation of Shibuya’s urban condition from various angles—the impact of deregulation on open spaces and increasingly privatized spaces, the mutating relationship of the minority and the majority of the town, spatial reorganization for the work–life balance, or spatial relationships that are being exploited or unexploited with the town’s unique topography, among other issues—which resulted in diverse individual proposals. This book presents five of these proposals attached with contextual annotations, which together aim to address Japanese readers with the key issues of urbanism today and offer ideas through architectural thinking, siting in the frontline of urban redevelopment in Japan.

Published by CCC Media House, Spring 2019.

232 pages, hardcover, 14.75 x 21 cm, $17 USD; 1900 JPY, electronic edition $14 USD; 1520 JPY
ISBN 978-4-48419-28-6