Books
Learning from Tokio
Satori has published the result of exhaustive, stimulating research conducted by Japan-based architect Jorge Almazán and Studiolab, his laboratory at Keio University. It combines explanatory texts with abundant original graphics in three main forms: photos of the subject matter, taken by the authors; rigorous drawings, based on data collected during field work; and high-precision depictions of urban and architectural scenes, rendered in a way that the general public can understand.
Tokyo is thus presented through five key elements of its fabric: from the dense yokocho alleys full of small bars to the zakkyo commercial buildings, with their stacks of programs expanding the street space vertically, through architectures tucked under transport infrastructures like elevated roads. Plus the sinuous ankyo streets, which incorporate vegetation and encourage walking, and the dense low-rise neighborhoods where the metropolis exemplarily adapts to the scale of those who experience it day by day.
Tokio emergente joins the pool of studies that have been done on the Japanese capital – what the authors call ‘Tokyology’ – but, far from offering a stereotyped view of the city and its urban phenomena, it makes a critical stand on its continuous process of evolution and conflict. Its intention is to give “design lessons with the aim of explaining not only the what but also the why and the how,” and ultimately of providing a practical guide to learning from solutions formulated by an ‘emerging’ urbanism, to be applied in other parts of the world.
