Still City Project
The Still City Project investigates how we can move beyond the driving forces of our modern industrialized world; infinite economic growth, technologic progress and population growth. The project is a search for the 'Still City': an urban culture that is based on dynamics that are inclusive and sustainable. The ambition of the project is to find and make the images and stories we need to construct a post-growth urban society. — read more
The Still City Project
Power to the People
Still City Tokyo
- — All posts
- — The Tokyo Still City Guide
- — Why Tokyo?
- — The Workshop
- — Workshop Participants
- — The Location
- — The Program
- — The Workshop Brochure
Supported by
Shibuya Gyaru, 2011
Creative: Subcultures and Crafts — Though economic and political stagnation pervades, creativity has not been stalled. When one looks at the subcultural vibrancy of areas such as Harajuku, Shimokitasawa, Koenji or even along the Inokashira train-line one wonders to what extent Tokyo or Japan has truly flat lined. The cultural and artistic output is immense. The aesthetic aptitude in Japan is minimal and perfectionist, a sense of form and material that strikes a balances between the abstractions of modernism and the essentialism of craft. To reverse the trend of de-industrialization that Japan was experiencing after the end of the Japanese financial bubble in the 1990s the Japanese Prime Minister’s Office set up a ‘monozukuri kondankai (consultative council on monozukuri)’ and enacted the Basic Law for Promoting Monozukuri Foundation Technology. The word ‘monozukuri’ is only 15 years old or so, but refers to an updated notion of craftsmanship, where it is combined with a very Japanese notion of design, science and manufacturing, where the aim is refinement, continuous improvement and not being wasteful.