Manual of Mutants, Hybrids, Endangered, Super Species / MMHESS

Strategies / 01 Territory / Siting

SITING / ANALYSIS Shinto Shrines in Kawaramachi-dori, Kyoto / 河原町通りの神社, 京都 Construction zone, where everything is demolished except the shrine

This shrine is elevated and fenced off and the trees hide it from passerby. Plastic and wood shelter for bikes

The major street of Karasuma-dori

Shrine No. 23, Kyoto

Shrine No. 35, Kyoto

Storefront, where the shrine is just sitting on its threshold Shrine

Shrine No. 29, Kyoto

MMHESS / Summer 2011 Studio / Investigator / Alice Huang

The shrine blends in with the facade, as they have the same grided pattern, and the shrine is not extruded or separated from it in any way.

Shrine No. 33, Kyoto

Manual of Mutants, Hybrids, Endangered, Super Species / MMHESS

Published on May 23, 2021

Yehre Suh / Urban Terrains Lab

About

With the chaotic pace of development and expansion of global metropolises, traditional fabric of cities have become hybridized with the new to form mutant and hybrid species of the urban terrain. The new metropolitan city is a site of natural selection between the new, the old, the new old, and the old new through processes of transition, negotiation, mitigation, preservation, erasure and reconstruction. And within the informal dynamic of cities like Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul, fueled by forces of globalization, discussions of preservation and cultural identity can only progress under the rubric of nationalism, tourism and marketability. As biologists who embark on travels to far distant lands to discover new and hybrid species of the ecological system, we embark on a trip to the old and new cities of China, Japan and Korea to investigate and document the conflicts and negotiations between the traditional fabric of the city and the new urban transformations of globalization and its agencies.

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