Reimagining Inujima 


Instructor/ Kazuyo Sejima (SANAA)  
Study Abroad/ Universität für angewandte Kunst , Wien




Partners: Niklas Knap and Nicolas Gold


Vernacular Synergies attempts to establish a model of revitalizing the rapid depopulation of rural Japan, looking to address the specific conditions on the Island of Inujima. The project was presented as part of the 2016 Venice Biennale exhibition.
 

The Island of Inujima was an industrial center in the late 1800s; as the economy shifted in 1900, the generations moved to the cities for economic opportunity. Japan's consolidation to urban centers left rural communities under-serviced, making access to health care and dignified care facilities challenging.


The proposed scheme introduces a care facility that adopts the vernacular conditions on the island as part of a healthcare identity, reinventing the health care typology by accepting local tradition, extroverted the program and creating centers of community life. It thereby answers to the health care typology of individuality and specialization found in the Japanese care system of today.
 

The community strategy comprises three steps: the function distribution that spreads the program across the entire island. This network adaptation adapts the healthcare facilities to the island's vernacular order and clusters the existing buildings according to proximity and size. The patterns of inhabitation found on the island help logically locate the program; the public functions are located at the end of roads as a destination, while the living units adapt the existing domestic architecture of the island to the needs of the patients. Each cluster was evaluated and programmed with a series of 'in-between spaces' according to their unique spatial relationships to define a central gathering space. A ground condition to meet the physical disabilities of the residents frames each cluster. A roof condition to protect the residents from the weather also serves to unite the spaces.