for Nagata, for Cities

“for Nagata, for Cities” is an “Urbanist” in Residence project conducted in Nagata, Kobe. With a ward office as a client, for the Cities team, Yukako Ishikawa and Mariko Sugita, were invited to stay for 3 weeks in Nagata to conduct field research to discover the city’s attractions and resources. During our stay, various urbanists, both Japanese and international, were invited to visit us to conduct collaborative research and workshops, making the most of their respective specialties.

👫Open Studio

We opened up the Siriike Valley, where we were staying, and held three open studio sessions. More than 200 people in total from inside and outside of Nagata gathered to engage in dialogue on the future of the City.

👣 Field Research

In order to research and shed light on the hidden resources and beauty of Nagata, we’ve developed a “jealousy of you” project. Here, we created colorful frames as a research tool to catch the hidden resources across the city, to archive our outsider’s perspectives, documenting the places, people, materials, phenomena that we genuinely feel jealous of, in a positive way. As a result, we highlighted a series of “spots of jealousy,” which we displayed in a gallery room in the residency.