- type: conceptual design
- location: inujima island, japan
- status: conceptual design / academic project (SCI-Arc)
- tutors: D. Ruy
- made in: c4d, Blender, Zbrush
The Seto Inland Sea, sometimes referred to as the Mediterranean of Japan, contains over three
thousand small islands. Among them is a small cluster of “Art Islands” where unique experiments have been conducted deploying art, landscape, and architecture for ecological remediation.
Originally inhabited by modest fishing villages, these islands turned into sites of industrial extraction during the early twentieth century, leaving behind a legacy of abandoned refineries, defunct mining operations, and contaminated brown fields. In recent years, the Japanese government and large corporations have been investing in these sites transforming them into destinations for contemporary art and eco-tourism.
At approximately one hundred and thirty-three acres, Inujima is small for an island, but large for a designed object. The design problem as both small and large in scope is something we will discuss frequently. Instead of treating this island as a site for designed objects, we will take the more ambitious position of considering the entirety of the island as a designed object. Inujima is open for visitors every year from April to November. Although the art museum and the galleries that are located in the island are very popular, visitors tend to mostly focus on art and almost disregard the rest of the island, and its natural beauty. Trying to reshift focus, and to redistribute attention to the rest of the island, a game of “art hunting” was created.
Using already existing objects, situations and characteristics of the island as info, a series of sculptures were made in order to be spread around the island’s landscape. The purpose of reusage is to experiment with the sense of the familiarity of the place and combine it with an ecological thinking. Repurposing parts of the island back to it, allows multiple versions of the objects of interest to coexist. So this sculpture hunting game transcedence into a sensory and conceptual challenge for the participants.
Leave a Reply