Metropolitan Design Center 2007 Undergraduate Travel Fellowship : Evan Hall

Evan Hall, Undergraduate, College of Design, 2007 Metropolitan Design Center Undergraduate Travel Fellowship Recipient.

Link: Project Web Site

Making the Urban Fiber Visible: A Travel Fellowship Analyzing Japanese Urban Planning Techniques and Architecture

"This travel fellowship consisted of visits to Tokyo, Sendai, Osaka, Kyoto, Kanazawa and Fukuoka to study the urban fiber in the context of programmatic relationships to public buildings and public spaces, specifically architecture and the street. In Minneapolis, we find our way by streets and numbers. In Japan, buildings are numbered in the order they were erected. The city becomes less a grid of numbers and streets, but a series of spatial meanings and programs. People walking around the streets of Tokyo or Osaka therefore have a mental map of the city and the relationship of structures. Much like the Japanese writing system Kanji (Chinese borrowed image-like writing system), the city becomes a dialogue and a layered mesh of visual understandings for each individual."

"The Twin Cities Metropolitan area has a much more spread out, car structured urban fabric. However, in time Minneapolis will become denser and expand into the suburban ring, new passageways will form, and the suburbs may be given an urban identity that is lacking. Anchoring institutions such as the Guthrie, the Downtown Public Library, and the Walker art center are beginning to describe a city ‘without street names,’ and one that is more visually oriented by pedestrians and public transportation. I was submerged into both architecture and Japanese language, while in the process articulating the social and visual interactions that take place in the advanced orderly chaotic visually structured Japanese city."
-Evan Hall

 





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