The Spirit of Ukiyo

浮 世 絵 の 精 神 [the spirit of ukiyo]

THE SPIRIT OF UKIYO An investigation of the technological within the Japanese urban environment during a period of unprecedented social and economic change.

Ryan Myers Hughes Hall College University of Cambridge This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in the text.

This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the MPhil Examination in Architecture & Urban Design (2020-2022) Word count: 12,251 (excluding bibliography)

CONTENTS Acknowledgements Abstract 10 Introduction 11 Aims & Objectives 11 Methodology 12 Case Study Area 12 Thesis Structure

PAST 16 The Genesis of Research Urbanism 18 The Importation of Modernity

PRESENT 26 Layers of Erosion 33 Tokyo in Transition 35 Injecting Innovation

FUTURE 64 The Floating World: An Infrastructural Future 74 Conclusions 79 Bibliography 83 Interviews 84 List of Figures

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research would not exist without the assistance and support of numerous individuals.

Firstly, and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to Ingrid Schröder for her invaluable guidance, commitment, and enthusiasm for this project. In a similar vein, I would like to thank James Pockson for his insight, advice, and support throughout this project.

In Seoul, I wish special thanks to my colleagues, Sun-Young Rieh, Sang Hyup Lee, the Department of Urban Science, and the University of Seoul for whose insight, generosity and hospitality made this thesis possible.

Finally, this thesis is dedicated to the love, support and patience of my family and friends, for which my thanks could never be sufficient, but without I could not have hoped to realise this research and so much more.

ABSTRACT

The Spirit of Ukiyo is a body of design research that pursues a regenerative architecture which is anchored within the potential for an urban design strategy to revitalise the diminishing socioeconomic landscape of the Koyama district of Shinagawa City within the neo-metropolis Tokyo, Japan. Historical socio-political complexities have produced a dichotomy to the existing internalised conception of modernisation. Japan embraces and encapsulates the global definition of modernity—high tech metropolises and world-leading technological innovation. Parallel to this, the narratives Japan tells itself about its technological affluence—that the nation arose from the restoration of imperialism during the Meiji period—reveal deep attachments to remnants of a feudal past. This oscillating internal conflict of conception of modernity can be viewed as a direct result of Japan’s desire for a national identity. The complexity and construction associated with the yearning for an identity has resulted in a significant transition towards the technological advancement of the nation, a direct implication of this is the erection of research parks which have bloomed. The Japanese government’s attempt at the regionalisation of research and development has caused an exodus toward suburbia, resulting in the failure of research parks to create a successful environment of innovation and integrate into the Japanese landscape. Emblematic of the dual vision of modernity endemic to Japan synchronous to the evolving post-industrial revolution. Learning from international urban precedents, this design research speculates and theorises as to the possibility of an alternative to the current research park typology—one that is inherently Western and under-serves the needs of the contemporary Japanese population, by considering a new form of urbanism formulated from a reframing of this typology into a new programmatic landscape through the manipulation of existing and diminishing infrastructures.

INTRODUCTION

Constant innovation, constant states of exception and stating anew, the increasing immateriality and abstraction of forms of production and consumption birthed from the post-industrial revolution have effectively rendered any prescriptive spatial organisation obstructive in the drive towards the aspiration of infinite economic growth. As a global city, Tokyo has experienced spatial and ethnographic restructuring alongside the transition of the post-industrial revolution characterised by the evolution of the city consequent to evolving labour market patterns, gentrification, and socio-economic stagnation.

Ranging from the (re)development of vacant commercial, industrial, or reclaimed land to a spiritless modernity, which has transformed Tokyo’s socio-economic landscape since the beginning of the twenty-first century.1 From its nebulous origins as a feudal town enveloping a castle to an urban laboratory where the cultures of the East and West are re-engineered into perceptibly Japanese hybridity, the city of Tokyo for all its modernity and yearning for the future, is impregnated with the past. Tokyo is not only a city but a network. Structural forms congeal and liquefy, architectural function undergoes unification becoming fluid, plasma and pixels supersede concrete and glass. Buildings are multi-dimensional objects, facilitating “electronic information flows, LED images and neon traceries, the paraphernalia of a cybernetic city replacing the old waterways of Edo as the medium of flux, of instant, virtual communication.”2 A city with an extensive familiarity with disaster, reform, and reconstruction. Established upon historical fires, earthquakes and conflicts, the city has long been accustomed to a continuous cycle of destruction and radical (re)development.3 This cycle has accomplished what even the worst natural disasters had only partially succeeded in doing—altering the face of Tokyo forever. The resulting urban fabric oscillates not only between reality and fiction but past, present, and future. Tokyo’s thirst for the contemporary and pursuit of the future is encapsulated by its nostalgia for the past. The city has preserved its sense of tradition despite embracing the influences and trends of both global- and westernisation, but with the current unprecedented social and economic transition occurring, it finds itself in an internal conflict of identity. This has resulted with all facets of society now being injected with modern technologies and other infrastructures, most notably the blooming of research parks in order to promote innovation as the nation’s new identity and reignite the stagnating economy.

The objective of this design research is to investigate the role of the technological and its architectural manifestation: the research park typology in relation to Tokyo’s ongoing unprecedented socio-economic transition and conflict of identity.

Despite the contemporary manifestation of an urban research park being a relatively new phenomenon, it has had significant influence as a tool; an innovation injection in transforming its surrounding urban socio-economic landscape. To reflect upon the physical evolution of the research park typology and its influence one must recognise how the production, function and symbolism of research urbanism has been radically transformed by the evolving social, economic, and political conditions of the nation.

Lützeler, Ralph, ‘Population Increase and “New-Build Gentrification” in Central Tōkyō’, Erdkunde, 62.4 (2008), 287–99 Mansfield, Stephen. ‘Tokyo: A Cultural and Literary History.’ Andrews UK, 2009

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Richie, Donald. ‘Tokyo: A View of the City’, Reaktion Books, Limited, 1999

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES This research is guided by the following questions:

1. Through a design driven framework, is it possible to regenerate and improve the socio-economic landscape of the Koyama district within the neo-metropolis of Tokyo?

2. What is the role of typically rural and centripetal research parks and what value they can possibly add to the urban fabric as a catalyst for urban regeneration?

3. How can contemporary Japanese urbanism be made more harmonious and the research park typology more urban within the context of the diminishing urban environment of Tokyo?

METHODOLOGY This design research employs a tailored methodology, deriving of architectural based urban design, academic research, and ethnographic observation. Design is used as a tool to explore and speculate upon these mediums (including conversations and formal interviews) which is subsequently analysed and supported through the use of academic literature, and primary resources such as planning policy, reports and guidelines offered by local institutions, bodies, and ministries of the Japanese government.

In September 2021, I visited South Korea for three months and conducted a focussed study of the urban research and development sector typology. During this fieldwork period I conducted extensive photographic surveys, spatial analysis and interviews with researchers, architects and planners that revealed the significant challenges and opportunities of research urbanism. All of which has provided a critical insight into the current market trends and social condition of the role of the technological in the Global East, revealing opportunities for intervention and clearly demonstrating where the built urban fabric is contested against this technological gentrification. This research is accompanied by a series of design propositions that seek to address the conflicting relationship between the research park and the built urban fabric by reimagining this typology into a tool for urban revitalisation. The research presented within this thesis is reliant upon experience gained throughout a period where I was exposed to daily life in Eastern culture. Living within the inner-city residential community of Mangwon-dong, located by the banks of the Hangang River in mid-western Seoul, I was exposed to the typical lifestyles and cultural practices that inform contemporary Eastern society. Furthermore, informal discussions with residents, researchers and local commercial traders have provided invaluable insights into daily life, beyond my own experience and observations.

Consequently, this design research has been developed through extensive field research, anchored by primary observations, photographic evidence, interviews, and months of desk-based research. This research examines the nature of a modernity that is informed by vast political and economic agendas. Engaging with extensive academic literature within the field, urban policy and primary data, this design research is approached from a Western perspective, whilst building upon an expansive understanding of contemporary Eastern culture. Paradoxically, a limited language ability has hindered many aspects of this research but has also encouraged the utilisation of the deployed design methodology.

Most importantly, this thesis is a piece of propositional design research, which seeks to deliver an alternative understanding and interpretation of the urban research park typology through speculative built intervention. The proposal aims to provide a socially sustainable approach that responds to contemporary socio-economic stagnation, urban policy, and cultural sensitivity. With the intention to revitalise the Koyama district, contributing to the re-activation of this area and an increase in dialogue between East and West upon the role of the technological within contemporary urbanism.

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CASE STUDY AREA Urbanisation subjected to the scalpel of a plethora of surgeons by excessive speed and varying styles has led to the creation of chaotic and inharmonious urban topographies that expose the derelict socio-economic landscape within the city of Tokyo, and Japan at large. Consequently, this thesis treats this condition to an extent, as a global phenomenon whilst taking the specific example of the subdistrict of Koyama in Tokyo as the basis of this study. Tokyo has been chosen for study as it has been the historical basis of mass urban- and globalisation, its rapid (re)development has produced a wealth of diminishing districts, making it a critical location to explore this particular urban phenomenon.

The residential sub-district Musashi-Koyama is located on the periphery of the two special prefectural wards of Shinagawa and Meguro, falling under the government jurisdiction of the former. Located approximately 10km Southwest of the Imperial Palace, which lies in the centre of Tokyo. Within the city’s inner west, it’s accessible by car, bus, and the Tōkyū Meguro trainline whilst being within walking distance to the Nakameguro River. The epicentre of this study will be the MusashiKoyama Palm Shōtengai and its surrounding community, which represents an archetypal contemporary urban condition in Tokyo. This community is in a state of flux, the historical alleyways that envelope the train station have subsequently been torn down to be replaced by a spiritless modernity. This same story is not uncommon throughout Tokyo, as the city has reconfigured its built fabric with a haphazard approach for the Olympics in 2020. Thus, the sampled area of study is critical given the condition of the diminishing social economic landscape of the contemporary Japanese city. This study is complemented by a series of case studies analysed from Japan’s former colony on the Korean Peninsula—Seoul, South Korea during an extended period of fieldwork.

THESIS STRUCTURE This thesis is divided into three chapters that reflect the evolution of urbanism in Tokyo.

Chapter 1 (Past) traces the chronological development of the research park typology and Japan as a modern nation, exploring the processes of modern- and urbanisation to reveal the contextual conditions against which Japanese modernity has developed.

Chapter 2 (Present) explores the current unprecedent socio-economic transition of Tokyo and introduces the city of Seoul as a case study, examining two urban research parks which have instigated the development of the districts they belong.

Exploring the relationships between modernisation, culture, and locality and how these relationships are influenced by the process of urban revitalisation.

Chapter 3 (Future) speculates to the potential manifestation of a proposed design framework as an alternative urban future, one that has learnt from the opportunities and challenges of the explored case studies to establish a new form of harmonious urbanism.

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Figure 01: (opposite) Musashi-Koyama, 2019

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Figure 02: Morning outside Ueno Station, circa 1936

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過 去 [past]

THE GENESIS OF RESEARCH URBANISM

In the 19th and early 20th century, industrial quarters—areas of high density in manufacturing corporations participating in related or complementary operations—materialized within cities across the West.1 Spanning across Europe from Milan, Manchester and Stuttgart beyond the Atlantic to Detroit, New York, and Baltimore in the United States. These districts witnessed and became the centre stage in the transition from the early mercantile city to the industrial metropolis, a period conceived from significant innovations in manufacturing, infrastructure, and urban development.2 Following the Second World War (1939-1945), the American city underwent a period of fundamental change. The post-war rise in power of the corporate entity and technological advancement oversaw further evolution as the change in nature of manufacturing resulted in the decentralisation of the industrial metropolis as Mozingo notes that: “While urban decentralization in the form of middle and upper-middle-class residential suburbs, suburban industries, and working-class suburbs had been extending metropolitan zones since the nineteenth century, the dense and diverse city centre remained the energetic and magnetic hub of American cultural and economic life before the 1950s. The post-war milieu tipped the balance toward the rapid decentralization of urban cores and their concentrations of commerce, industry, and residential neighbourhoods. It precipitously accelerated the restructuring of the American city into the lowerdensity, dispersed, multifocal, auto-dependent metropolitan pattern that characterizes it early in the twenty-first century. The accelerated restructuring encompassed both a new scale, as vast city additions dwarfed the old centres, and a new scope, as enterprises previously resistant to edge ward movement joined the energetic rush to the urban periphery.”3 The combination of this technological advancement and spatial dispersion together ignited the birth of research parks.

Beginning in the early 1950s, collaborations between universities, private developers, and the federal government designed and built collections of labs and offices with the aim of creating dynamic socio-economic assemblages that accelerate economic growth and international competitiveness, providing a means to commercialise research into innovative technologies and services.4 The urban high-rise office block, although symbolically powerful, was failing to generate the desired interaction and community internally of the corporate ideal. In contrast, the research park, conceived as a horizontal skyscraper with communal areas that fostered socialisation, provided an alternative to the high-rise office block, and had become conventional and omnipresent in metropolitan peripheries.5 This paradigm began with the construction of the Stanford Research Park— in what is now Santa Clara Valley’s Silicon Valley—which was then followed by the development of the Research Triangle Park in Raleigh Durham, and later the innovation belts on the peripheries of the East Coast megalopolis.6 Supported by state policy and catalysed by the rapidly expanding commodification of research, the modern interpretation of the research park typology was reinforced as a symbol of modernity and economic advancement within the West. The decline of the manufacturing industry, and the perceived high-tech success of regions such as Silicon Valley, Research Triangle Park, and Boston’s Route 128 inspired a global movement in which nations competed with one another to replicate their success.

Research urbanism was seen as the vehicle for renewed economic growth, with research parks being the means of developing

Thompson, E. P. ‘Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism.’ 1967 Katz, Bruce, and Julie Wagner, ‘The Rise of Innovation Districts: A New Geography of Innovation in America’, 2014 3 Mozingo, Louise A, ‘Pastoral Capitalism: A History of Suburban Corporate Landscapes’, MIT Press, 2011.

4 National Research Council,’ Understanding Research, Science and Technology Parks: Global Best Practices: Report of a Symposium’, ed. by Charles W. Wessner (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2009) 5 Kerr, Ron, Sarah K. Robinson, and Carole Elliott. ‘Modernism, Postmodernism, and Corporate Power: Historicizing the Architectural Typology of the Corporate Campus’, Management & Organizational History (2016), 11.2 (Routledge): 123–46 6 Katz and Wagner, pg.6 1 2

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leading edge technology and generating occupational opportunities in areas in need of industrial restructuring.1 By the 1960s and 1970s the establishment of research parks was extended eastward to Japan.2 Tokyo’s rapid transformation saw the nature of industry transition from mass to flexible production. Tokyo’s mass industry was relocated to the nation’s peripheries. The void left in Tokyo by the industrial exodus was filled by the development of corporate offices and housing.

The remaining industrial production in Tokyo underwent technological transformation, reconstructing the tradition factory into small scale pilot shops. Following in a similar vein to that of the West, the growing immaterialisation of the service economy resulted in corporate offices relocating to the metropolitan edge in the 1980s. These offices were replaced by emerging industries and research clusters, Tokyo became the epicentre of Japan’s technological innovation as a result of the metropolitan divisions of labour.3 Consequently, “a fundamental change in the structure of the Japanese regional and urban system had taken place. This was the shift from the dualistic system, where the urban—rural dichotomy was prominent and meaningful, to the monolithic system, where this dichotomy became blurred and unrealistic.”4 The architectural typology of the research park has become increasing complex and distorted due to the plethora of global interpretations and terminology associated with it. These vary from Technology Centres, Business Parks, Innovation Centres, Techno-parks, Science Cities, Corporate Campuses, Technopoles and Research Parks. The volume, breadth, and variety of corporations that occupy these spaces might range substantially, but their common distinctiveness is encapsulated by their physical manifestation. Typically devised from a pastoral ideal—a series of centripetal office and laboratory spaces enclosing a central green quadrangle wrapped by an expansive grey ocean of asphalt occupied by a multitude of vehicles within a matrix of landscapes that bestows a suburban consistency. However, the evolution of this typology has seen it manifest beyond this typicality into a variety of different morphologies. As contemporary cities have seen dramatic increases in density and urbanisation, the research park has been compressed and reconfigured to suit this new context in the form of landmarks, towers, and blocks.

In terms of architectural historiography, the pastoral landscape ideal that informs this typology has broad Western origins that can be traced to two pivotal sources. Firstly, the medieval English universities of Oxford and Cambridge. These universities pioneered an environmental condition where the academics worked together within a cloistered collegiate system in the interior of the Edenic garden landscape of England. The importance of this environmental condition later migrated to America, and early colonial educational institutions were based on this collegiate structure.5 Secondly, to American inventor Thomas Edison’s laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. In the late nineteenth century, innovation had been a product of pilot shop invention culture; manufacturing and experimental machine shops. Collaborative environments “in which skilled operatives, superintendents, machinists, and manufacturers in various industries forged technological communities that drew on practical experience to design, build and refine new technology.”6 It was from this culture that Edison merged the collegiate environment of these universities with elaborate electrical and chemical laboratories forming the foundation for the pastoral Western landscape of research—one that emphasises a connection to industry and science on the one hand, and nature on the other.

Thalji, Firas, ‘The Planning and Design of Science and Technology Parks’, 2005 Diez-Vial, I., Montoro-Sanchez, A. ‘Research evolution in science parks and incubators: foundations and new trends’, Scientometrics 110, 1243–1272 (2017).

3 Lo, Yeung, Lo, Fu-chen, and Yeung, Yue-man, ‘Emerging World Cities in Pacific Asia’ (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1996) 4 Ibid, pp. 103 5 Chapman, M. Perry. ‘American Places: In Search of the Twenty-First Century Campus’ (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2006) 6 Israel, Paul B., ‘Inventing Industrial Research: Thomas Edison and the Menlo Park Laboratory’, Endeavour, 26.2 (2002), 48–54 1 2

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THE IMPORTATION OF MODERNITY

Japan has preserved its perception of tradition despite the simultaneous processes of both global- and westernisation, but the genesis of modernity in Japan is one of importation. The Japanese experience contradicts Sewell’s definition of modernity as a reinvention of itself to fit the new context and needs: a cultural construct where modernity evolves itself.1 The Japanese throughout history have engaged in a process of adoption, modification, and absorption of Western technologies and conceptions of modernisation. Re-engineering concepts, ideas, and practices into perceptibly Japanese forms to fit the unique cultural, social, economic, and consumer landscapes endemic to Japan. A creative synthesis combining exotic with domestic, modern with traditional, Western with Japanese to enable the transition from its feudal origin to that of modernity.2 From the Meiji Restoration period in 1868, faced with threats and opportunities after opening its doors Japan commenced on a continual pursuit to emulate the technological affluence of its Western counterparts, a techno-nationalism incorporating the rapid and formal westernisation of science, technology, education, economics, and the armed forces.3 The dissolution of the feudal political system and reinstatement of imperialism—the Imperial Diet—led to the adoption of a Western modern state in a metaphysical but not a spiritual sense. The Japanese spirit desired to retain its culture, its way of life, and its family structure, yet simultaneously to build a modern nation that is comparable to that of the West.4 National identity accounted for a fundamental part of the vision of modernity at the core of the Imperial Diet, where the military-state proposed urbanisation as the means of introducing a sense of national identity throughout the Japanese archipelago. Despite the foundations laid under this imperialist revolution, Japan still lagged behind technologically.

The cataclysm of Japan’s defeat at the end of the Second World War (August 15th, 1945) resulted in the city of Tokyo being reduced to ash and the nation occupied, the progress and foundations laid in the Meiji Restoration period were disrupted by the occupational puissance of the United States (1945-1952).5 Under this shift in hegemon, the United States-led Allied Powers began the process of erasing the remnants of feudalism and imperialism. Establishing a new constitution where the Kazoku (peerage) was abolished, the Kizoku-in (the House of Peers) was reconstituted as the Sangiin (House of Councillors) and the emperor was reduced to no more than a symbolic figure.6 Simultaneously the zaibatsu industrial and financial conglomerates were dismantled as the Americans sought to democratise the monopolised Japanese economic market. The societal instability caused by this upheaval was further exacerbated by the reverting of many of these actions with the later enacted Reverse Course policy.7 In turn, creating an ideological divide toward a capitalist identity that would redefine the nation. While poor living conditions persisted throughout the city as it rebuilt itself, Tokyo began to see the technological percolate into culture as western ways of dressing, social habits, and electronic devices such as portable stereos became commodities of everyday life—generating a complex visual taxonomy of the transition of a culture toward modernity. The people who were up until then merely subjects to be governed, began to find their voices as the main agents of modernisation and reform. Following the end of the post-war occupation and the withdrawal of the United States from Japan, many of the translated socio-political visions of democracy, free speech, and gender equality remained engrained in the minds of the new generation.8 With the resulting void in governance, the Liberal Democratic Party (LPD) was established.

Sewell, Bill, ‘Reconsidering the Modern in Japanese History: Modernity in the Service of the Prewar Japanese Empire’, Japan Review, 16 (2004), 213–58

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Institute for the Future, ‘Innovation Through Reinvention: An Exploration of Japan’s Innovation Environment’, Global Innovations Forum (2001)

Wittner, David G., ‘Technology and the Culture of Progress in Meiji Japan’ (London; New York: Routledge, 2008) Morishima, Michio, ‘Why Has Japan Succeeded? : Western Technology and the Japanese Ethos’, 1982 5 Levin, and Levin, Miriam R, ‘Urban Modernity Cultural Innovation in the Second Industrial Revolution’ (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010) 6 Shibata, Tsutomu., and Takeuchi, Hirotaka, Japan, ‘Moving Toward a More Advanced Knowledge Economy, 1 Assessment and Lessons’ (Washington: World Bank Publications, 2006) 7 Schaller, Michael, ‘The American Occupation of Japan: the Origins of the Cold War in Asia’ (New York ; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985) 8 Gerteis, Christopher, and Timothy S. George, ‘Japan Since 1945 : from Postwar to Post-Bubble’ (London: Bloomsbury, 2013) pg. 17 3 4

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Figure 03: Civilians watch the US landing in Wakayama Prefecture, Honshu Island following Japan’s defeat

Figure 04: The American flag raised from the roof of the Nippon News building in Tokyo

The conservative party moved swiftly to denounce many of the American incorporated policies as un-Japanese. The party began consolidating its position by exploiting state funding to pursue its own political agenda of economic development and incorporating regionalisation policies to maintain favour in (often rural) regional constituencies.1 The complexity and fragmentation of ‘occupation policy and politics, with its interplay of surrender and restoration, reform and recovery, sovereignty and subordination’2 amplified the discordance of ideologies between tradition and modernisation.

Subsequently, Japan again found itself technologically lagging behind the West. Throughout the 1960s Japan’s postoccupation recovery centred on the rapid industrial development of the Taiheiyō Belt, spanning from the Ibaraki Prefecture in the northeast to the Fukuoka Prefecture in the southwest. Consequently, regional socio-economic inequalities escalated due to the high concentration of industrial production within the Taiheiyō Belt. An essentially skewed process, leaving many domains of society unattended, underdeveloped, protracted, or distorted. In order to address these regional disparities, the newly empowered LPD enacted several policy instruments such as the promotion of industrial relocation to ease economic concentration.3 In parallel to the rapid economic development occurring the Metabolist group—architects Kiyonori Kikutake, Noriaki “Kisho” Kurokawa, Masato Otaka, Fumihiko Maki, critic Noboru Kawazoe, industrial designer Kenji Ekuan and graphic designer Awazu Kiyoshi—were advocating for the creation of a new relationship between humanity and technology.

The Metabolists saw technology as an extension of humanity and sought to encourage the active metabolic development of society through their proposals. Redefining the city as a flexible organism that grows and develops. Within an infrastructure of urban axes and architectural cores built using industrialised technology.4 The concurrent occurrence of the Metabolist architectural movement and economic restructuring, saw for the first time in history the old Japanese social institutions disrupted. Right-wing ideologies perceived the aspiration of technological innovation as a threat, a cultural corrosion to the spirit of Japan. Whereas the remainder of the political spectrum, saw innovation as a solution to the nation’s erratic systemic, economic, and societal issues.5 This aspiration of innovation provided the basis for Japan’s Technopolis programme—a technological systematically applied policy framework at a national scale. The Technopolis programme had the domestic ambition of creating a series of hightechnology-oriented industrial cities in peripheral areas, in order to simultaneously promote new technologies, the spatial dispersal of industrial production, and the reduction of regional disparities in population and economic activities. An attempt by governmental policy to transform the nation into a high-tech archipelago—a socio-economic landscape fertile for knowledge intensification and regional development headed for the twenty-first century by synthesising the technological with culture.6 The Japanese government had become determined to inject all facets of society with modern technologies and other infrastructure to promote innovation.7 A fixation of the success of Western technological assemblages had limited the considerations for their own technological innovation in Japan. The Japanese government obsessed in Silicon Valley’s informal atmosphere, social landscape, and fluid exchange of ideas which facilitated rich cross-fertilisation between academics, researchers, manufacturers, and industrialists.8 The Technopolis projects were modelled on this premise of cross fertilisation—the promotion of innovation by accumulating a variety of programmes from high technological activities,

Kitagawa Fumi, ‘Regionalisation of Innovation Policies: The Case of Japan’, 2005 Miller, Alice Lyman, and Richard Wich, ‘Becoming Asia : Change and Continuity in Asian International Relations Since World War II’, 2020 3 Odagiri, Hiroyuki, Akira Goto, and Akira Gotåo, ‘Technology and Industrial Development in Japan: Building Capabilities by Learning, Innovation, and Public Policy’ (Clarendon, 1996) 4 Kurokawa, Kishō, ‘Metabolism in Architecture’ (Studio Vista, 1977) 5 Moore, Aaron Stephen, ‘Constructing East Asia: Technology, Ideology, and Empire in Japan’s Wartime Era, 1931-1945’, 2020 6 Yazawa, Shujiro, ‘The Technopolis Program In Japan’, Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies, 22.1 (1990), pg. 7–18 7 Edgington, David W., ‘New Strategies for Technology Development in Japanese Cities and Regions’, The Town Planning Review, 60.1 (1989), 1–27 pg.23 8 Kawashima, T, and W Stöhr, ‘Decentralized Technology Policy: The Case of Japan’, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 6.4 (1988), 427–39 1 2

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research facilities, corporations, and universities into one cohesive and fluent environment.1 In aspiration of importing the synergy which generates ideological and technological innovations of Silicon Valley into Japan.2 However, the Japanese Technopolis fails to replicate many aspects from its inspiration. By forcing the reproduction of Silicon Valley with a blend of metropolitan atmospheres native to the Taiheiyō Belt, it fails to harmonious with the rural cultural landscape that it gentrifies. This model is unable to achieve self-sufficiency, as it relies on high infrastructural support of urban centres, ‘bullet train connections, high bandwidth telecommunications, cable networks and dedicated water and power supplies.’3 The forced development and regionalisation inherent of the Japanese Technopolis epitomises the importation of an innovation ideology which results in a typological augmentation that is not Western nor Japanese, a process which perpetuates Japan’s convoluted conception of modernisation and economic prosperity. The process of importation— the assimilation of the West—demonstrates not that the Japanese are being dominated by Western ideologies but are perplexed to their own identity as a modern nation and their relationship with the technological. This complex modern identity has embedded itself within the built environment enabling a new experience of modernity different from any other preceding periods.

Fujita, Kuniko, ‘The Technopolis: High Technology and Regional Development in Japan’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 12.4 (1988), 566–94 Benko, Georges, ‘Technopoles, High-Tech Industries and Regional Development: A Critical Review’, GeoJournal, 51.3 (2000), pg. 157–67 3 Graham, Stephen, and Simon Marvin, ‘Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition’ (London: Routledge, 2001) 1 2

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Figure 05: Cultural weathering

Figure 06: Now demolished alleyways adjacent to the Musashi-Koyama Station

現 在 [present]

LAYERS OF EROSION

The contemporary Japanese urban landscape is undergoing a series of cultural, demographic, and economic changes. The socio-economic repercussions from a complex history of imported modernity, industrial restructuring, and economic stagnation following the burst of the economic bubble in 1991 can still be felt today. The continual decline in the national birth rate has given rise to a rapidly aging society, the population is projected to continually fall for the foreseeable future. The total population is estimated at a figure of 116.6 million in 2030 and 88 million in 2065.1 The growing impact of this transition is that the total amount of Japanese citizens now over the of age sixty-five exceeds that of children under the age of fourteen. As Japan faces a new demographic topography at the social intersection of the post-industrial revolution, the Japanese family structure—the vehicle for industrial productivity—has become a contested terrain.2 In the immediacy of the homescape, the declining fertility rates and societal aging has eroded the traditional family structure as household fragmentation and divergence have become characteristic within the urban fabric.3 The domestic domain that provides shelter from the sea of consumption is now a site of nostalgia and also of dystopia in the form of a fragmented social structure, the depletion of affect through the technological and social seclusion of the individualistic framework of the contemporary built environment.

Against the backdrop of escalating immateriality, economic instability, public distrust of government regulation, and the erosion of traditional social values have cast doubt upon the consistency of Japanese modernity. Rural villages have experienced severe socioeconomic decline, cities have expanded dramatically with developing suburban neighbourhoods continually consuming rural land with the sprawl of modern gentrification. Japan has transformed into a nation of complex modern urbanites.4 Despite this urban sprawl, the typical neighbourhood has rapidly lost its appeal; prospective homeowners now aspire to apartment complexes in the city, and younger generations are less inclined to early espousing and increasingly inhabiting single dwellings. Cities have started to shrink because of this transition in socio-economic conditions—the housing market and lifestyles. Current neighbourhoods are facing critical social challenges—the senescence of residents and a decline in living conditions. Threating the sustainability and security of the residential setting of the neighbourhood.5 In the case of Tokyo physical symptoms of urban shrinkage such as vacant houses, derelict Shōtengais (shopping arcades), neglected infrastructures, and ghostly public spaces are ubiquitous in the urban landscape. Generating a spiritless modernity, one that fails to emanate a sense of place with an atmosphere of physical emptiness that engenders voids throughout the urban fabric.6 Tokyo has plummeted into a splintering spiral of shrinkage, which cannot be resolved by the isolated efforts of each prefectural municipality alone. Communities have come together to transpire movements in an attempt to prevent depopulation by promoting the migration of urbanites. The demographic movements of migrants into traditional communities have created what Ohashi calls social capital, with “the expansion of their multi-generational relationships and creation of new urban-suburban interactions.”7 Nonetheless, with the processes of gentrification and disintegration under way simultaneously Tokyo’s traditional communities are vanishing from the urban landscape as they increasingly make way for the new large- and small-scale residential developments that have been appearing—especially in response to the rising demand for one-room apartments since the late 1990s—inside the remaining dense and low-rise residential enclaves. Once the cohesion within the community has disintegrated, the cost of maintaining standards of living become prohibitive, and the collective void causes further strain onto the already struggling local metropolitan economy. Tokyo has failed to foster sustainable social landscapes and industrial hierarchies throughout its urban landscape. Consequently, Tokyo’s residential enclaves have been engulfed by the sea of consumption transforming from places of (re)production to places of consumption.

The case of the Shinagawa neighbourhood of Musashi-Koyama is no different, a once vibrant residential enclave characterised by a network of densely lined alleyways that previously housed masses of intimate restaurants, bars, and transgenerational businesses is now a neglected neighbourhood. It represents the ongoing (re)development, gentrification, and destruction of Tokyo’s traditional urban landscape; in particular, the older housing stock with its fragmented, aging, and debilitated community which stands in sharp contrast to

National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (IPSS), ‘Social Security in Japan (2019 edition)’ IPSS Research Report No.85 (2019) Hashimoto, Akiko, John W. Traphagan, ‘Imagined Families, Lived Families: Culture and Kinship in Contemporary Japan’ (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2008) 3 Hirayama, Yōsuke, and Richard Ronald, eds., ‘Housing and Social Transition in Japan’ (Abingdon [UK], Taylor & Francis Group, 2007) 4 Wissink, Bart, and Arjan Hazelzet, ‘Social Networks in “Neighbourhood Tokyo”’, Urban Studies, 49.7 (2012), 1527–48 5 Yui, Yoshimichi, Tomoko Kubo, and Hitoshi Miyazawa, ‘Shrinking and Super-Aging Suburbs in Japanese Metropolis’, Sociology Study, 7 (2017) 6 Buhnik, S. ‘From Shrinking Cities to Toshi no Shukushō: Identifying Patterns of Urban Shrinkage in the Osaka Metropolitan Area’. Berkeley Planning Journal, (2010) 7 Ohashi, H., ‘Suburban Fortunes: Urban Policies, Planning and Suburban Transformation in Tokyo Metropolis’, UCL (University College London), 2018) 1 2

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Figure 07: Aged housing within Musashi-Koyama

Figure 08: Wooden homes situated in the heart of Musashi-Koyama

that of the new community of young modern high-rises beginning to saturate the urban fabric. Since Japan’s successful bid in 2013 when Tokyo won the opportunity to host the Olympic games in 2020 many—especially deprived and lesser known—neighbourhoods (including the case-study area) are struggling to survive as they face demolition and have experienced different waves and forms of gentrification.1 The Shinagawa Prefectural Ward Government have formulated the ‘around Musashi-Koyama Station area town development vision’.

Which aims to develop a mixed-use urban district appropriate for being referred to as “the western entrance of Shinagawa Ward.”2 With many of the bars and restaurants located east of Musashi-Koyama Station being demolished with more scheduled. Developers have capitalised on the resulting void, Mitsui Fudosan has erected a residential and commercial mixed-use development, spanning 40-stories in clear disparity to that of the existing fabric. The pressures of development and governmental intervention has seen perennial community members be pressured into abandoning their businesses and homes in the name of disaster prevention and modernisation. As a result, the Musashi-Koyama neighbourhood has seen a dramatic rise in abandoned and aging dense wooden structures. These structures are seen as obstacles to modernisation and reminiscent of the past. They have lost their pragmatic function and have become aesthetic embodiments of different memories, traditions, and cultures.3 The Shōtengai which binds this enclave together is another point of contention as evolving consumer habits and increasing immaterialisation of labour are decreasing the perceived value of the shopping arcade. The Shōtengai offers a wide range of commodities from fresh groceries, alcohol, stationary, and furniture to computer software, anime, and manga. In addition to a variety of services such as launderettes, bicycle repair stores and salons that can be found within the Shōtengai. By providing convenient everyday necessities as well as numerous niches, it fulfils crucial social and economic functions that contribute to the maintenance of the vitality of the urban enclave. However, as an increasing number of urban areas undertake social restructuring, they struggle to retain economic prosperity leading to the phenomenon of shatta dori or shuttered streets.4 The nation’s metropolitan centres are eroding, disintegrating, and hollowing, a process observed and symbolised by over 70 per cent of the existing Shōtengai throughout Japan.5 Yet, the value of the Shōtengai extends beyond mere economics and is deeply connected to the local milieu, facilitating diverse community events and celebrations, including the matsuri and various local festivals.6 The urban fragmentation and increasing disparities between social groups, the marginalised and vanishing neighbourhoods of Tokyo which are considered to be redundant are being reduced to sites of nostalgia which reflect a once traditional and authentic everyday life. The abandoned structures scattered throughout the diminishing enclave reflect the entanglement between past and present as the repressed subconscious of modernity seeks to gentrify.7 New urban policies that seek to improve the quality of everyday life are heavily influenced by market orientation, privatisation, and commodification, resulting in diverse conflicts between developers and residents, which are most visible at the neighbourhood scale.8 The state’s response to Japan’s structural weakness and contested terrain of the urban enclave has been to reassert the project of modernisation, injecting innovation into the urban landscape.

Imai, Heide, and Yao Nancy Ji, ‘Social Capital, Innovation, and Local Resilience: Tokyo Neighbourhood in Times of Crisis’, Asian Studies, 9 (2021) Mitsui Fudosan, ‘Corporate News Release’, 2017 3 Ito, Masami, ‘Heart of Darkness: Nostalgic Tokyo Disappearing amid Construction Boom’, The Japan Times, 2015 4 Ito, Masami, ‘Shōtengai: Examining the evolution of Tokyo’s venerable shopping districts’, The Japan Times, 2018 5 Imai, Heide, ‘Alleyways between Urban Renewal, Cultural Innovation, and Social Integration: The Cases of Tokyo and Seoul’, in Asian Alleyways: An Urban Vernacular in Times of Globalization, (Amsterdam University Press, 2020), pp. 87–114 6 Fujioka, Tatsuma, ‘Transition of Japanese commercial space: What has been lost from the commercial space?’, 2016 7 Imai, pp. 90 8 Fujii, S., Okata, J., & Sorensen, A. ‘Inner-city redevelopment in Tokyo: Conflicts over urban places, planning governance, and neighborhoods.’ In Living Cities in Japan: Citizens’ Movements, Machizukuri and Local Environments pp. 247-266 (2007) 1 2

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Figures 10-11: Streetscape of Musashi-Koyama enclave

Figure 09: Streetscape of Musashi-Koyama enclave

TOKYO IN TRANSITION

With the ambiguous condition of the contemporary socio-economic landscape; shifting technology, fluid boundaries, the slippery nature of governance and the larger processes of urbanisation, the city of Tokyo is now entering a new age of urbanism which has saw the rise in innovation-led development. The city has historically served as a site for collective defence and protection against external threats, a centre of aristocracy and administration for an agrarian society, and a location for the (re)production of labour in the industrial revolution.

The contemporary programmatic nature of Tokyo is now in a process of metamorphosis, transforming beyond commercialism and industrialism into a centre of innovation as research parks and institutions alike have impregnated the urban fabric.1 The skyline is now defined by these new isolated urban (re)development projects, rising corporate blocks, towers and research complexes intertwined with high-rise residential apartment complexes. A built environment emanating a sensation of fragmented islands, whose view can be described as a scattered archipelago of aspiring landmarks floating on a vast sea of low-rise high-density residential enclaves. The continual pursuit of modernisation has seen the intersections between tradition and modernity, urban and rural, industrial and agricultural blurred to the point beyond recognition. Traversing the city one can encounter scenes of seemingly tradition agricultural production in Tokyo where rice paddies continue to be cultivated adjacent to high-tech factories and research parks, equally one can encounter modern post-industrial development within the rural peripheries of the city, where corporations such as Toyota and Kyowahakko Kirin are extending the tapestry of urban sprawl.2 These critical realms within the urban sphere of Tokyo are spaces in which one can experience an amplified nature of locality but also a spirit of otherness—a sort of limbo. They exist as junctions, intersections, concentrations, and spaces of liminality that become significant through the paradox of their physical character. The project of modernisation can therefore be characterised as a synchronisation of the continuous collisions between social, economic, and political forces that reflect both the past and the future in tandem.3 Facing the modern socio-economic uncertainties and contested urban terrain the Japanese government have concluded that direct intervention is essential to stimulate innovation and reform by the formation of ‘Society 5.0’—a human-centred society in which economic development and the resolution of social issues are compatible with one another through a highly integrated system of cyberspace and physical space.4 Accelerating the return of Japan as the technological leader in the global economy of the twenty-first century. This intervention has manifested as a variety of administrative and fiscal policies. Since the inception of the original Basic Act on Science and Technology (1995), the evolving policy has facilitated a multitude of programmes for securing government research investments, reforming the mechanisms of the national research system, promoting development of research facilities and equipment, and promoting international exchange and collaboration. Through numerous initiatives including concentrated investment, increasing linkages between academia and industry, increasing doctoral programmes, and development of research parks.5 At the 201st session of the national Diet in 2020, the Japanese government revised the Basic Act on Science and Technology for the first time in 25 years. In this revision, the name of the law was changed to Basic Act on Science, Technology, and Innovation.6 The 6th rendition of the Basic Plan sees the importance of innovation take the forefront and places prominence on the role of the built environment for the ‘creation of innovation’. In ambition of generating “new value through scientific discovery or invention, development of new products or services, or other creative activities, and through the dissemination thereof, create great change in the economic society.”7 By the establishment of diverse and sustainable cities across Japan that enhance socio-economic value through the restructuring and re-activation of local industry, realisation of symbiosis with nature, and human-oriented urban development.

Komninos, Nicos. ‘Intelligent Cities and Globalisation of Innovation Networks’. Routledge, 2008.

Traphagan, John W., and Christopher S. Thompson, ‘The Practice of Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Japan’, 2006 3 Harootunian, Harry D., ‘History’s Disquiet: Modernity, Cultural Practice, and the Question of Everyday Life’ (2000) 4 Fukuyama, Mayumi, ‘Society 5.0: Aiming for a New Human-Centered Society’, 2018 5 Council for Science, Technology and Innovation, Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, ‘Report on The 5th Science and Technology Basic Plan’, 2015 6 Council for Science, Technology and Innovation, Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, ‘Science, Technology, and Innovation Basic Plan’, 2021 7 Ibid, pp. 9 1 2

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In pursuit of this economic vision the state has reinforced Tokyo’s expansive network of research urbanism, as domestic production is shifting overseas networks are rapidly expanding in Tokyo with constant investment in research and persistent in-house innovation occurring in the corporate sphere. The Tokyo metropolitan area benefits from the essence of urbanisation—the economies of agglomeration—as it contains Japan’s highest concentration of key government agencies, public and private research parks, specialised manufacturers, and universities which continually nourishes the knowledge intensity of the urban economy.1 This ecosystem facilitates the successful commodification of research as new technologies can be materialised in a tangible form, tested, refined, and then marketed to Tokyo’s affluent consumers and expansive network of corporations in rapid succession.2 As such, Tokyo can be perceived as an expansive industrial laboratory that feeds off information streaming in from both domestic and international sources while injecting innovation of its own into the urban system. One that constantly reconfigures itself according to macro-level government policies, technological and market innovations, but one which currently fails to adapt to Japan’s evolving cultural milieu.

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Karan, Pradyumna P., and Dick Gilbreath, ‘Japan in the 21st Century: Environment, Economy, and Society’, Nijūisseiki No Nihon, 2005 Yusuf, Shahid, and Kaoru. Nabeshima, ‘Postindustrial East Asian Cities Innovation for Growth’ (2006)

INJECTING INNOVATION

As Japan begins to seek solutions to its socio-economic stagnation through the infusion of the technological with the built environment, traversing the marginal sea from the Japanese archipelago to Japan’s former colony on the Korean Peninsula. The capital city of Seoul represents a paradigmatic instance of innovation-led development having already begun its own experiments in the injection of innovation into its urban landscape as a catalyst for urban revitalisation. Through experimentation and pilot projects, the technological has diffused itself into in the cityscape, and more profoundly if immaterially in the collective consciousness of South Korea, as a symbol of modernity.1 The Republic of Korea is a nation akin to that of Japan, one of radical changes, rigidities, complexities, intensities, and imbalances. From colonisation and ever-changing hegemons to state-led modernisation and the plutocracy of the chaebol (transgenerational industrial conglomerates.)2 The transformations and convolutions of South Korea’s social, economic, and political systems have superimposed a compressed modernity. One informed from the global historical and structural conditions of modernisation in which the dynamic coexistence of mutually dissimilar cultural, political, and socio-economic elements have led to the construction and assimilation of a highly complex social structure in an extremely compressed timespan.3 This has seen the urban landscape of Seoul embody an emerging form of post-industrial capitalism with the intricacy of Seoul’s identity as a city being constructed through a myriad of bureaucratic initiatives in the theatre of the city’s spatial and social transformations. Seoul is undertaking a new phase of restructuring and modernisation, characterised by efforts to create an attractive image of itself as a global city building up new, cutting-edge knowledge and creative industries.4 These efforts intensely advertise the city’s triumphs in its rapid economic development, modernisation, and technological affluency. Seoul’s local governmental authorities have orchestrated a series of development projects in aspiration of branding key districts in ways that would reinforce this image. These emerging districts referred to as development clusters, engrain the technological into the everyday as a means of re-positioning the city as one of a globalised future.5 Most notably, the developments of the Magok Industrial Complex and Guro Digital Complex.

The district of Magok-dong is situated to the southwest of Seoul within the Gangseo-gu ward, south of the Han River. Its location at the western edge of the city is characterised by the militarised region of the Han River, close to the Northern Limit Line, the contested maritime border in the Yellow Sea separating South and North Korea. Located within 2 km of Gimpo Airport, 40 km of Incheon International Airport, and 13 km of downtown Seoul. Until the early 2000s and issuing of the Han River Renaissance Project, the Magok Industrial Complex had been agricultural land for cultivating rice. It was the only place in Seoul where agricultural production had endured over 700 years of socio-economic transformation, making it the only significant amount of undeveloped land remaining in Seoul suitable for large-scale development. The Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) created an eco-friendly initiative for the restructuring of this district into a new industrial cluster for the development and integration of advanced technologies in Magok-dong known as the Magok Industrial Complex. The Magok-dong district was planned differently from other development clusters projects as it was under the smart city agenda of the national government. Magok-dong began developing its industrial complex and promoting the transition into a smart city in the energy and information technology sectors.6 Construction plans for the Magok district were revealed in December 2005, but it took another two years for an area to be chosen for development and additional two years for construction to commence. The SMG decided to rebrand the Magok-dong development, referring to it as a

Joo, Yu-Min, ‘Megacity Seoul: Urbanization and the Development of Modern South Korea’, Routledge (2018) Lee, Steven Hugh, and Yunshik. Chang, ‘Transformations in Twentieth Century Korea’, 2006 3 Chang, Kyŏng-sŏp., ‘South Korea Under Compressed Modernity: Familial Political Economy in Transition’ (London: Routledge, 2010) 4 Peng, I, ‘Postindustrial Pressures, Political Regime Shifts, and Social Policy Reform in Japan and South Korea.’ Journal of East Asian Studies, 4(3), 389-425. (2004).

5 Sciences Po Urban School, ‘Unpacking Seoul: Concerns of a Solutionist Metropolis’, 2020 6 Seoul Institute, ‘The Vision and Realization Strategy of Smart City Seoul in 4th Industrial Revolution’, 2019 1 2

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Figure 12: Street view of LG Science Park

Figure 13: External envelop of LG Science Park

regional hub in the centre of Seoul or the ‘Knowledge Industrial Green City Leading the Future of Northeast Asia’.1 The SMG sought for a centrepiece and linchpin in the development of the Magok Industrial Complex, and in 2010, the chaebol LG Group acquired approximately 170,000 square-meters of land in the Magok-dong district. The LG Group in collaboration with Korean and American architectural conglomerates Gansam and HOK (Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum) devised plans to create the LG Science Park, an innovative research park capable of leading the global post-industrial revolution. It was the late president of LG Koo Bon-moo’s vision to bring together the plethora of LG’s affiliates and transform the work culture of the company to align more with what he saw as the culture of the twenty-first century corporation—a family like culture and environment. The research park spans 1,110,000 square-meters of gross floor area, across 26 research facility buildings which gathers all of LG’s various affiliates that operate research laboratories into one space and operates under the future-oriented motto of ‘beyond the dream.’ In aspiration of discovering products that yield the potential to lead the market and the growth engine for the next generation through research on the development, convergence, and integration of core source technologies.2 ‘Sitting quietly does not lead to a miracle,’ said former Korean president Park Geun-hye in Seoul at the ground-breaking ceremony for LG’s proposed research park (23rd October 2014.) It was part of a speech in praise of the chaebol’s commitment to the future of the Magok-dong District as an instigator for urban development.3 The research park incorporates mechanisms from the pastoral ideal typical of its typology. The landscape interwoven into the research park, generates spatial pivots of synergy, integration, and collaboration that enhance the connection and social interaction between researchers, in conjunction with the communal circulation spaces of atriums and sky-bridges that form connections between the separate affiliate buildings. The landscape gesticulates to the past, formulated from a series of irregularly shaped lanes that can be traced back through time to the historical pathways of the past rice paddies. The lanes which define this landscape are populated with colonies of mature Korean pine trees, rivulets and Suseok (viewing stones) that emanate the sense of pleasure and serenity of a traditional Korean garden. The landscape emanates outward beyond the borders of the research park into the surrounding fabric informing the arteries that connection all parts of the district in an ecological axis.4 It is within these arteries in which urban development has taken place, with the rapid construction of residential, commercial and research structures. The green arteries are shrouded by the increasingly vertical urbanised fabric which sees typical agents of gentrification; chain restaurants, bars, cafes, and amenities line the streetscape with apartment complexes looming above. The patterns of residential and commercial development stand side by side with abrupt spatial boundaries. The abundance of commercial programmes throughout the streetscape benefit from the adjacency to the research park which is home to 24,000 researchers, engineers, and scientists who generate significant social and economic capital. The surrounding residential development has seen rapid demographic change occur in the district, reflecting the reality of the evolving contemporary Korean family structure; a smaller family unit rather than the extravagant international styles of apartment complexes native to other regions of Seoul. As the research urbanism continues to expand, both spatially and in regard to its influence on the surrounding residential communities, socioeconomic inclusivity and impacts on land development, living costs, and neighbourhood spirit will continue to be contested. There exist no remedies for the issues of living cost escalation, displacement, and change in community spirit that has come with economic growth and development of the Magok-dong district. The research park is another system which is trying to revitalise the city without considering the local cultural specificity and understanding the mechanisms of its functioning.

Evans, Karvonen, Raven, Evans, James Philip Martin, Karvonen, Andrew, and Raven, Rob, ‘The Experimental City’ (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2016) Myers, Ryan, ‘Gansam Interview’ (Seoul, 2021) 3 Evans, pp. 185 4 Myers, Ryan, ‘HOK Interview’ (Seoul, 2021) 1 2

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Figure 14: Landscaping of the LG Science Park

Figure 15: View along developed artery

Figure 16: View along developed artery

Figure 17: Facades of the supporting infrastructure

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Figure 18: Remnants of escapism

Internally, the research laboratory is no longer purely a space of production but also a unique domestic space. The internalisation of common amenities within the research park such as the Integrated Support Centre (ISC) which houses the communal dining facilities, gym, recreation areas, convenience retail and day-care centre creates a domesticated environment—a space that encourages collaboration, creativity, and flexible working. However, an economic and spatial dichotomy is created, where the internationalising of amenities within the research park creates the sense of immersion—the distortion of the spatial and temporal boundaries of work—that facilitates researchers to think imaginatively and generate outcomes from concentration and relaxation through the domesticated environment. Whilst simultaneously diminishing the status of the streetscape—the physical surroundings of the research park—to a supplementary support infrastructure void of spirit and purpose beyond the research park. Yet, despite this process of internalisation an overabundance of researchers, scientists, and engineers can typically be found flocking to the peripheries of the urban block away from the research park’s antagonistic thresholds of surveillance systems and patrolling security guards. As they seek privacy and shelter from the pressures and anxieties of a suppressed conservative work culture. Imposing a sense of caution on the value of spatial proximity, as it is not the only form of closeness, and incidental encounters with people that facilitate them start to communicate, trust, and cooperate with one another but also, it’s the notion of openness. The traces of escapism can be observed in the remnants of takeaway coffee cups and cigarettes littered around the boundary of the research park.

The Magok industrial complex represents a broader question of community resistance, endurance, and occupation in the wake of the post-industrial within an evolving urban environment orchestrated by globalisation. The Magok Industrial Complex is not a single unified development, the LG Science Park that anchors the district is it illustrative of a type of development that leans away from an area’s rich economic and cultural past, and although for the majority is fluid and accessible to the public, function as its own piece of isolated urbanism. A form of technological gentrification that encapsulates the recruitment of educated upper-middle class residents, consumers, and workers with minimal consideration on the displacement, lack of housing provisions and employment opportunities for the indigenous, agricultural community of the district. Consequently, what the district now symbolizes is a top-down initiative of creating technological clusters and innovative integrated neighbourhoods through urban revitalisation based on principles of a convoluted ecological modernisation.1A conceptualisation of sustainable revitalisation defined through its lacklustre modern buildings and green arteries. Although the process of urban revitalisation needs to facilitate modern development, adaptive infrastructure, and attractive public spaces. For the successful instance of urban revitalisation for any component of the city, it is crucial that the distinct layers in the social-spatial structure of the community is recognised and incorporated. It is not enough to allocate a district and brand it as an exotic incubator for it to start attracting talent and entities that will revitalize the diminishing local socio-economic landscape. In order to better translate innovation into public benefit, mechanisms for governing innovation and emerging technologies should be more proactive and democratic reflecting the involvement of local milieu.

The Guro Digital Complex is located to the southwest of Seoul within the Guro-gu ward, south of the Han River. Originally conceived as an industrial complex under the Complex Development and Construction Act, the first of its kind within South Korea was designed to attract Korean and Japanese companies alike to increase exports of industrial products and generate foreign capital in the 1960s. Since then, the continuous expansion of the industrial complex significantly contributed to the ‘Miracle on the Han River,’ a period encapsulating South Korea’s rapid industrial development and modernisation processes which resulted in the rapid economic growth of Seoul between the early 1960s and late 1990s.2 In the 1970s the Guro Industrial Complex was South Korea’s main export hub. It produced a variety of products that span across numerous

Nam, Yoojin, ‘Government-led living lab: A case study of Magok Smart City living lab in Seoul’, 2021 Ryu, Suha, and Saehoon Kim, ‘Investigation of Urban Places in Seoul Digital Industrial Complex (G-Valley)’, IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 2018

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industries—from textiles, clothing, sewing accessories, wigs and miscellaneous goods to machinery, synthetic resin products, semi-conductors, and commodified electronics. It was this variety of production that saw the rapid growth of the complex with enterprises concentrated in the same or similar industries accumulating to maximise economic potential. The abundance of work and appeal of metropolitan wages saw mass migration both internationally and domestically which flooded the labour market with workers from rural provinces spurring Korea’s industrialisation with low wages and extensive hours of labour.1 As the complex saw continuous expanse it was necessary to expand the resources in which it required. The Guro Water Purification Plant which can be seen as a compressed symbol of South Korea’s economic development, was expanded to supply industrial water needed by the Guro Industrial Complex. It was approved by the Seoul Metropolitan Government to utilises the Anyangcheon river as the primary source for the water purification plant that facilitates the production of the complex. However, in the 1980s water pollution due to factory wastewater was emerging as a social problem. Environmental pollution in the city’s main bodies of water such as Hangang River and Anyangcheon Stream intensified. Resulting in the strengthening of environmental preservation policy which saw the factories of the industrial complex become highly regulated. This saw an exodus from the Guro Industrial Complex and the relocation of factories and worker to international competitors such as China and Japan. From the end of the 1980s the industrial structure of the Guro Industrial Complex began to deteriorate, dynamic changes of industrial restructuring, demographic transition, and exodus of workers had occurred and was embodied in the urban fabric as a symbol of Seoul’s globalisation process.2 The ‘Guro Industrial Complex Reorganization Plan’ began to be considered, and in 1997, it was consolidated into the Korea Industrial Complex Corporation’s Guro Complex Advanced Plan in cooperation with the Seoul Metropolitan Government.

The core of the Guro complex’s advanced plan was the concept of an innovation-oriented industrial complex. Formulated from systems of production, work, research, and education in ambition of creating new industries to continue the economic prosperity that was fading. Changes have progressed in an effort to form a foundation for the post-industrial future of Seoul, with the Guro Industrial Complex being rebranded with the name changed to the Guro Digital Complex as it transitions away from its industrial past.3 The corporations inhabiting this district has now completely changed both qualitatively and quantitatively. With a substantial focus on leading high-tech activities of information, scientific, technological, and communication-related development.

From 2002, the Guro Digital Complex experienced an influx of software, multimedia, informational technologies companies, surpassing the once economic hub of Teheran Valley in Gangnam. It began to change into a cluster of small and mediumsized venture companies and developing its own identity as an innovation district now known as the G-Valley. With the KICOX Venture Tower built by the Korea Industrial Complex Corporation as the beginning, new structures were constructed on the sites that former factories had abandoned, and small and medium-size venture firms, which had spread throughout Seoul, including the Teheran Valley in Gangnam, entered the complex one after the other, staging a grand migration.4 Due to these changes in the Guro Industrial Complex, the once vital lifeline of the complex the Guro Water Purification Plant was shut down and subsequently the land was rented to a golf course. It had been left unattended for about 10 years until the end of June 2005, when the site of the past Guro Water Purification Plant was transformed into a new local landmark for the Guro Digital Complex, the G-Tower. Through the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s G-Valley Emergency Project (2013) and the Seoul Digital Industrial Complex Structural Advancement Project Plan (2015), the Guro Water Purification Plant, which mirrored the formation and development process of the Guro Industrial Complex, has become the landmark

Kim, Jong-il, ‘Lessons for South Asia from the Industrial Cluster Development Experience of the Republic of Korea’, ADB South Asia working paper series no.37, 2015 Cho, Hyunji, ‘Regeneration Practices in Diverse Neighbourhoods: A Case Study of Garibong-Dong, South Korea’, 2019 3 Park, Sang, ‘Seoul Digital Complex as a Strategy for Building Innovative Cluster’, AI Soc., 24 (2009), 393–402 4 Colantonio, Burdett, Rode, Burdett, Richard, and Rode, Philipp, ‘Transforming Urban Economies: Policy Lessons from European and Asian Cities’, 2014 1 2

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Figure 19: Collision of urbanism

of a high-tech industry. The function of the old industrial fabric of Guro has been reinterpreted in a contemporary way.

The global gaming company Netmarble acquired the site of the Guro Water Purification Plant with subsidies and planning privileges from the Seoul Metropolitan Government to redevelop the site.1 The resulting research park developed towers 39 floors with an internal gross floor area of 172,000 square-meters. The masterplan of the G-Tower creates a porous space for communication between regions that had previously been isolated to one other due to the water purification plant site by carving circulation routes in and out of the building. Besides, to activate the local community and create synergy with surrounding areas, the building includes a variety of programmes from public and retail facilities that were not accessible in the previous industrial complex, including a convention centre, a sports centre, and a game museum. The development stands in deep contrast with the harsher if not low-income neighbourhood character of its industrial past. The transition from the historical factory block with residential use to the skyscraper is jarring in scale and ambience. It aims to become the centre piece of the Guro-dong district, and it has attracted the nickname of the Guro’s lighthouse—reflecting the intensive and conservative work culture of Netmarble, with the tower emanating light as it houses constant activities throughout the night.

The green space above the podium provides a space of recreation and socialisation where the internal community of researchers has the opportunity to intersect with the surrounding community. Yet, the G-Tower employs a series of physical thresholds such as barriers, gates, guards, and surveillance systems to isolate and shield the internal environment. It becomes an introverted realm, where space is only considered within the research park, and reject the streetscape which in turn establishes a fragmented relationship with the public realm and more broadly the city. These private and autonomous spaces could essentially be situated anywhere, irrespective of their surrounding fabric. The resulting atmosphere is combative and emits a sense of intrusion upon the community. The intentions of the urban research park are not grounded in social equity, despite their monotonous settlement in economically and environmentally contested districts of which have historically been involved in industrial and agricultural production, these locations are driven by economic and political opportunity, displacement, and social exclusion that advances the corporate vision.

Upon traversing the streetscape, it is intriguing to find that as the urban revitalisation has progressed, the past industrial nature of the district can still be discovered along the streetscape where direct office buildings and factories from the past industrial complex have been cloaked by new developments of near empty coffee shops, convenient stores, restaurants, and bars. The internalised amenities of the G-Tower stand in sharp to contrast to that of the streetscape, the internal café is bustling with a vibrant atmosphere of researchers, software engineers, and designers hustled around tables conversing and collaborating over corporate sponsored coffee. Offering only minimal commercial conveniences which minimise the necessity to transverse the streetscape. The mall within the podium structure of the development can be viewed as an extension of the streetscape, characterised by its vast emptiness and deficit social landscape. Despite the proximity to public transportation, it is evident that the surrounding urban fabric of the G-Tower not easily traversed at the urban scale nor of interest with the lack of diversity within the streetscape. There is a distinct lack of cultural or built transitions from the research park to the streetscape.

The phenomenon of the urban research is an emerging system of development strategy to repurpose and revitalise underutilized and often diminishing industrial and residential spaces found throughout the urban fabric to assist creative practices, corporate ambitions, and research and development in technology, design, and science. This system formulates

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Myers, Ryan, ‘Heerim Architects and Planners Interview’ (Seoul, 2021)

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Figure 20: View from the street of the G Tower

Figure 21: G Tower facade

Figure 22: G Tower plaza

Figure 23: Hostile threshold

an image of high-technological affluence, more innovative cultural space that, although marketing its own industrial past as means of retaining a sense of local culture, it stands in paradox to the modernity it now embodies. The language advocating for the development of research parks continues to be a seductive notion to corporations, developers, urban planners, and government officials alike. With the view of research parks as a vehicle for economic prosperity, while revitalizing declining spaces within the urban fabric through smart and sustainable adaptive re-use strategies. The developments of the LG Science Park and G-Tower as a tool of urban revitalisation, ought not to be reflected upon solely by their prospects of enabling innovation and generating associated economic activity, but also regarding the variety and persistence of socio-economic opportunities produced, and how these research parks once established will embed into its broader social-economic and spatial landscapes. The instigation of revitalisation imposed by research parks onto a piece of urban fabric raises concerns of inclusion and social equity.1 Corporate visions of future innovation do not demonstrate harmony between past and present and only aspire for their own concept of the future. One that sees waves of gentrification, displacement, and exclusion permeate and alter the urban landscape. The language that shapes these developments should be revised with the intent of economic growth in tandem with re-distributional policies that can benefit the surrounding community.

Whilst the research park has evolved from economic and political opportunity, there is a dichotomy between the aspiration of modernisation and an urban revitalisation to the benefit of local communities. The vast and contested streetscapes that frame these developments highlight the unproductive and underexploited opportunities of these projects. The urban research park undertakes a radical scale that is no longer part of any urban tissue, at most, it coexists.2Becoming an isolated, exclusive, and corporate retreat from the city which has seen much of the function of the urban fabric internalised. Eroding the sense of public space—by means of hostile thresholds—severely constraining any possibility of community vitality. Whilst the streetscape is reduced into something purely utilitarian, a supplementary commercial infrastructure that’s only purpose is to support the research park. Traditional urban patterns have been reinterpreted through the extensive implementation of the contemporary research park typology that is an additional stride in the pursuit of modernisation. The conditions created by the research park may encourage the industrial restructuring of local economies and facilitate the rapid redevelopment of the surrounding fabric. However, traditional public spaces, fluid streetscapes and pedestrian social networks are averted by the research park, which fails to consider the disparities between the urbanisms in which they embody and create.

Whether the ambitions of urban revitalisation are successful is highly dependent on the architecture created, preserved, and harmony achieved with the surrounding socio-economic environment. The process of defining locality through the development of research urbanism can be an opportunity for collaborative and inclusive public processes rather than an imposed top-down visions constructed by political and corporate elites.3 As designers, we can utilise this intricate matrix of conditions, in which the research typology is employed, to engage with the built environment as key actors in the process of urban revitalisation. Whilst South Korea’s social and economic transition is far from complete, it serves as a precedent for the injection of innovation into the urban fabric highlighting the challenge and

Flint, A., ‘Are ‘Innovation Districts’ Right for Every City?’, CityLab, 2016 Koolhaas, Mau, Koolhaas, Rem, and Mau, Bruce, ‘Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large’ (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1995) 3 Drucker, Joshua, Carla Maria Kayanan, and Henry Renski, ‘Innovation Districts as a Strategy for Urban Economic Development: A Comparison of Four Cases.’, 2019 1 2

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Figure :

Figure 24: Internalised commercial realm of the G Tower

Figure 25: Public park of the G Tower

Figure 26: Facades of the supporting infrastructure

Figure 27: Facades of the supporting infrastructure

Figure 28: Conceptual framework for an infrastructural future

将 来 [future]

THE FLOATING WORLD: AN INFRASTRUCTURAL FUTURE

The socio-economic transformation predominantly occurring within cities has been brought about by the advent of the post-industrial economy and immaterial labour. The distinctions between past, present, and future have become increasingly indeterminate by the constant reconfigurations of the built environment, lifestyles, family structures, and values systems of Japan. Modernity’s insatiable desire to realise the total enclosure of productivity and social relations has flattened the city with a complete distribution and perpetually increasing flow of information and technologies, has blurred once distinctly segmented time, space, and spheres of the urban landscape.

In the transition of the post-industrial, the Shōtengai which struggles to remain economically viable has lost its spatial and programmatic value and has gained a new economic, symbolic, and commercial value loaded with nostalgia, a departure from its former incarnation. Slowly vanishing cloaked by the gentrification of surrounding developments of high-rise offices and residential towers, the nostalgic shopping arcade has been frozen in time. The Shōtengai has ceased to be an everyday component of contemporary Tokyo, being pushed to the periphery of the built and social environment. The communication which was once deeply rooted in the local community has lost its significance. What in fact is thriving in Tokyo now is based on a network of instantaneous, ephemeral, and unspecific but omnipresent networks which deny a tangibility. However, this urban spine as the foundation can form a system of prosperity and harmony, establishing itself as a new urban core, an incubator for the city.

Thus far, it has been established that injecting innovation into the built environment and the commodification of research offers the opportunity for demographic restructuring and social interaction. A research park in the declining urban enclave of Musashi-Koyama has the potential as a tool for revitalisation to reactivate the contested terrain and simultaneously stimulate economic growth. In the core of the city’s heart, the research park invites the isolated local community to integrate once again with the Musashi-Koyama Palm Shōtengai. The local community has seen its cultural milieu vanish to make way for high rise commercial development with a lack of hope and promise for the future of their home. Plans of demolition only reiterate the nations scepticism in the function of its democratic state that chooses to evict communities in order to modernise and generate economic activity. The research park thus uses innovation, a prevailing aspiration of Japanese spirit and national pride as way of revitalising the derelict structure and surrounding community. The inhabitation of the Shōtengai would support local businesses faced with the threats of shifting consumer habits, gentrification, and increasing immateriality.

The interface of the research park has the potential to preserve this fragment of the city and heighten awareness surrounding the decline of the urban enclave, whilst highlighting the opportunities to inhabit and generate economic value within these spaces. From the perspective of the state there are a number of advantages to this alternative approach. The project aligns with the technological ambitions stated within the Basic Act on Science, Technology, and Innovation by intertwining the industrial restructuring and re-activation of the local socio-economic landscape. Furthermore, Japan’s vastly flexible national zoning codes help the formal facilitation of this synthesis by the allowance of mix-use development across all the various administered zones even in the lowest intensity of the urban enclave.1 By providing a space for the commercial and post-industrial economies of each community to intertwine and flourish from one another, it is likely to the encourage development of networks and connections within the local milieu. A collaborative project with similar aspirations was initiated by the Gwangju Centre for Creative Economy and Innovation and Hyundai, who initiated the revitalisation of the Songjeong Yeokjeon Maeil Market in the southern city of Gwangju. The market, originally established in 1913, had been one of the country’s many traditional markets of decreasing prosperity. The market

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Akashi, T., ‘Urban Land Use Planning System in Japan’, 2007

1

originally housed approximately 60 different vendors, but over half of these vendors had closed their businesses due to the declining socio-economic landscape. Through the revitalisation initiative, the voids throughout the market have been occupied by start-up firms of technology companies and workshops reigniting the economic and social conditions of the now re-branded 1913 Songjeong-yeok Market.1 Similarly, the Mangwon Market which is akin to that of the traditional Japanese Shōtengai; with its enclosed arcade structure, exhibiting the importance of these traditional markets within the urban landscape. With its spine deeply rooted within the local urban fabric which forms the main circulation artery of the block, its not only acts as a space of commerce and circulation but of socialisation.

The majority of domestic functions which otherwise would be internalised within the research park are dissolved into the Shōtengai, which is reimagined into a comprehensive support infrastructure for the above architectural framework. A framework that exemplifies the minimal necessary for a non-restrictive and flexible environment to suit the changing needs of the Japanese population through the philosophy of openness—spatial organisation and abstraction of form. In turn, creating a collective tapestry and synthesis of a multitude of architectural programmes: commercial, residential, amenities, and research structures that stimulate the contested socio-economic landscape of Koyama.2 This intervention may inherit mechanisms of the block, the tower, the capsule, the slab, or even a blend of all, with each form the research park assumes it reveals a potential opportunity to inject innovation into the urban landscape that can redefine the relationship between the research park and urban enclave. Therefore, the Shōtengai can be realised as the foundation for the new form of programmatic landscape that is now the incubator of the community, facilitating social interaction and economic stimulation on a local scale whilst re-defining the wider role of the local shopping arcade within the city. With a number of Shōtengai throughout Tokyo, the framework employed is susceptible to expansion and repeatability creating a linear architectural system which extends and diffuses inextricably across the expansive enclaves, landscapes, and territories of Tokyo.

Kwon, Mee-yoo, ‘103-year-old Market gets Rejuvenated’, The Korea Times, 2016 To, Kien, and Keng Hua Chong, ‘The Traditional Shopping Street in Tokyo as a Culturally Sustainable and Ageing-Friendly Community’, 2017

1 2

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Figure 29-30: Mangwon Shōtengai structural envelope

Figure 31-32: Internal structure of Mangwon Shōtengai

Figure 33-34: Mangwon Shōtengai

Figure 35-36: Mangwon Shōtengai external intersections

CONCLUSIONS

In the West there is often a notion that Tokyo encapsulates the spirit of the technological—the hyper-modernity of hightech metropolises and world-leading technological innovation. While there are instances throughout the urban landscape in which this conception exists, the experience of the enclave is of another ilk. With the confrontation of continuous modernisation, the Japanese socio-economic landscape has shifted through various developmental forms of urbanism. The conception of modernity and therefore identity endemic to Japan has been crafted through these variations, which has saw a collision between technology and tradition, which erases and replaces local communities and cultures with a system of dualisms, blending otherness and holism into the urban fabric.1 The current socio-economic challenges facing the Japanese built environment derive from the intricately linked series of socio-political complexities that can be traced back to the beginning of Japan’s journey to modernity. Alternative conceptualisations of the research park reveal the opportunity to challenge the contested terrain of the urban enclave that is inherently rooted within the contemporary Japanese city. Japan’s demographic crisis gives it an opportunity for large-scale social experimentation—to reinvent its political, social, and economic structures, which are more suited to the industrial past rather than a post-industrial future. Once traditional lifestyles and family structures are no longer sustainable; yet it is not clear what the new models are. The design research conducted here is designed to explore both the spatial and socio-political potential of the research park as an instrument for urban revitalisation. To understand how the proposed architectural framework may manifest, the prototypical case study of the Koyama district in Shinagawa City, Tokyo acts as a testbed for the process of synthesis between the technological and traditional. The inhabitation and reimagination of the Shōtengai as a comprehensive support infrastructure to the research park has the potential to negotiate the socio-economic obstacles of the contested urban enclave. The synthesist approach responds to the particularities of Japan’s technological vision for the future whilst sustaining the architectural spirit of the traditional enclave. Encompassing a design philosophy in which the oriental individuum is preserved through the creation of physical environments that have value beyond economics, which have been lost in the process of modernisation.

Continuous studies of the urban research park should be conducted as these developments have only just begun in making their mark upon the urban landscape. The case study presented, and questions posed through this thesis exhibits a variety of possibilities for the residential enclave and the new relationship it may establish with the research park. By challenging the reverberations of the transitioning post-industrial landscape of Japan through an alternative urban future that questions the consistency of contemporary modernity, the propositional design methodology demonstrates a range of opportunities for the vanishing enclave. It is necessary that designers and policy makers examine through a historical lens and a more holistic perspective, the socio-economic opportunities that urban research parks may have for socially, economically, and politically contested communities of today. For future urban sustainability and regeneration, the current rigid mechanisms of Tokyo’s urban development need to be structurally altered by shifting emphasis toward the revitalisation of the urban fabric. Design explorations reveal how the prospect to recover the traditional enclave within the city is plausible, denouncing the notion that the city cannot be self-sufficient and sustainable without demolishing itself to make way for the future.

The theoretical design speculation presented has broad socio-political implications beyond the scope of this thesis yet aims to be a contribution toward Japanese urbanism and start a greater dialogue which at present is somewhat absent from both academic and professional discourse about the role of the technological within contemporary urbanism.

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Mather, Karan, Iijima, Karan, Pradyumna P., and Iijima, Shigerur, ‘Japanese Landscapes: Where Land & Culture Merge’, 1998

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INTERVIEWS

Chris Yoon (28th September 2021) Vice President, Gansam Seoul, South Korea Robert Studd (15th October 2021) Senior Project Architect, HOK Seoul, South Korea In Su Lee, Senior Vice President (19th October 2021) Woo Young Yang, Vice President Heerim Architects and Planners Seoul, South Korea Sung Hong Kim (21st October 2021) Professor of Architecture & Urbanism, University of Seoul Seoul, South Korea Donyun Kim (27th October 2021) Head of Smart Green City Lab, Sungkyunkwan University Seoul, South Korea Bokyung Lee (30th October 2021) Research Manager, The Seoul Institute Seoul, South Korea Yunhee Choi (31st October 2021) Architect and Researcher, Bureau of Architecture, Research & Environment Seoul, South Korea Sung Min Yang (12th November 2021) Senior Architect, SAMOO Architects & Engineers Seoul, South Korea Min Seok (16th November 2021) Centre Director, HSTREE Suwon, South Korea In addition, to the interviews listed above, many informal conversations and exchanges with local people and researchers have informed this design research.

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Musashi-Koyama, 2019 Source: Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI) [accessed 11/09/2021] Figure 2: Morning outside Ueno Station, circa 1936 Source: <https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2019/ may/17/the-lost-metropolis-1930s-tokyo-street-life-kineo-kuwabara-in-pictures> [accessed 11/09/2021] Figure 3: Civilians watch the US landing in Wakayama Prefecture, Honshu Island following Japan’s defeat Source: <https://www.army.mil/article/4255/the_u_s_army_in_post_world_war_ii_japan> [accessed 11/09/2021] Figure 4: The American flag raised from the roof of the Nippon News building in Tokyo Source: <https://flashbak.com/tokyo-japan-1917-1950-rare-images-of-love-loathing-and-life-24983/> [accessed 11/09/2021] Figure 5: Cultural weathering Source: <https://flashbak.com/tokyo-japan-1917-1950-rare-images-of-love-loathing-and-life-24983/> [accessed 11/09/2021]] Figure 6: Now demolished alleyways adjacent to the Musashi-Koyama Station Source: PCHG, Musashi-Koyama Photobook [Photo Scan] Figure 7: Aged housing within Musashi-Koyama Source: PCHG, Musashi-Koyama Photobook [Photo Scan] Figure 8: Wooden homes situated in the heart of Musashi-Koyama Source: PCHG, Musashi-Koyama Photobook [Photo Scan] Figure 9: Streetscape of Musashi-Koyama enclave Source: PCHG, Musashi-Koyama Photobook [Photo Scan] Figure 10: Streetscape of Musashi-Koyama enclave Source: PCHG, Musashi-Koyama Photobook [Photo Scan] Figure 11: Streetscape of Musashi-Koyama enclave PCHG, Musashi-Koyama Photobook [Photo Scan] Figure 12: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 13: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 14: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 15: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 16: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] 84

Figure 17: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 18: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 19: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 20: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 21: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 22: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 23: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 24: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 25: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 26: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 27: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 28: Author’s own illustration Figure 29: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 30: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 31: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 32: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 33: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 34: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 35: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021] Figure 36: Author’s own photograph [Photograph obtained during Fieldwork in Autumn 2021]

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The Spirit of Ukiyo

Ryan Myers

CDRS