Hand Made Tokyo: Document of the Tokyo Mapping Workshop (bootleg pdf for free distribution) Chris Berthelsen,

Jared Braiterman Email: Chris Berthelsen chris@a-small-lab.com (1) Text from the document (2) Photos of the physical edition packaging (3) Hand Made Tokyo Document (2up Spreads)

(1) Text Included in the Document

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When you squeeze this city, juice is sure to come pouring out. A juicy urban space that is permeated with an ample amount of good flavor in a soft urban shell is something that works surprisingly well.
(Tsukamoto, quoted in Kitayama 2010c:69). >> Article: Gardening for Strangers in Tokyo Author: Jared Braiterman http://tokyogreenspace.com ....Tokyo is organized differently than United States and European cities, and that many of these differences are nearly invisible to Japanese people. I formulated several guiding questions. Why do Tokyo residents care so deeply about their surroundings? What role can nature play in dense urban environments? What can other cities learn from Tokyo's urban gardening culture?.... Read the Article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jared-braiterman/gardening-for-strangers-i_b_ 419699.html

Workshop Report Author: Joan L. Bailey http://popcornhomestead.blogspot.com/ More than 25 people gathered last Saturday evening with scissors, markers, crayons, duct tape, and string to map out Tokyos everyday green spaces large and small during the first Tokyo DIY Gardening workshop. Held at 3331 Arts Chiyoda, a brand new arts space in a former junior high school, the workshop attracted attendees from all across the city. After a short presentation by the organizers, Jared Braiterman and Chris Berthelsen, on the purpose of the workshop and a little gardening exercise to warm up, participants began filling in sidewalk gardens, roof gardens, community gardens, and farms. Covering three or four tables, the map started with only a drawing of the Yamanote Line. Then someone drew the Chuo Line, and soon places like Inokashira Park, the Meiji Shrine, and Tachikawa appeared. Reaching for the blue plastic string one participant laid down the course of a canal greenway (complete with bike path) that runs from Inokashira Pond all the way to Shinjuku. Moments later the map began filling with parks, gardens, farms, trees, temples, shrines, and turning this Tokyo from white to green. Two hours later with a completed map before them, (including even Disneyland) the group admired their work. This Tokyo defied the concrete jungle stereotype, and appeared before us full of green life. Standing on chairs or leaning far over the table to snap photos with cameras and cell phones,

participants relished what theyd created together. Looking at this map it looks like a place Id want to live, said one attendee. Workshop Update Author: Jared Braiterman http://tokyogreenspace.com In todays sweltering heat, my Tokyo DIY Gardening co-instigator Chris Berthelsen and 3331 Arts Chiyodas Emma Ota documented the giant green city map created in the art center workshop two weeks ago. Its always inspiring to work with Chris, who is full of creative ideas and the energy to realize them. Hes already shared one small portion of the presentation: a model of the personal impact of urban green space. We will be sharing various slices of the green map once weve sorted out the images. The map itself is two meters by four meters, and made of standard A4 papers taped together. The thirty participants included a school child, musicians, ceramicists, textile buyer, real estate developer, architect, arts administrator, senior citizens, and some random people who were walking by. They used a mix of images we provided, plus blue string, markers, pens and things they brought, to create collages of urban green spaces that they knew or

wanted. They also wrote down project ideas on small forms embedded in the map. URL: http://tokyogreenspace.com/2010/09/03/documenting-tokyo-diy-gardening-wor kshops-green-city-map/ Map Report Author: Joan L. Bailey http://popcornhomestead.blogspot.com/ A collaborative creation, the Tokyo DIY Gardening Map combines hope, reality, and little bit of imagination to bring the citys green spaces from roof gardens to community gardens to farms to plants in pots alive in surprising ways. Even if you missed the workshop where the map was born a lively affair bubbling over with glue, scissors, tape, markers, and exuberant participants a view of both real as well as hoped for places is now available. You can plunge from a birds-eye view of Tokyo to street level for a stroll through a tunnel of blooming cherries along the Tamagawa Jousoui (existing), or to explore a fantastic flower garden that softens the hard concrete edges of Shibuya (not real). They can also admire the perseverance required to farm near Narita Airport (real), or visit one of two vantage points Disneyland in the Southeast and Tachikawa in the Northwest for long views back to the center. Detailed images accompanied by short summaries with useful links encourage visitors to not only wander the map, but perhaps notice new details

in their own corner of the cityscape. The organizers, Chris Berthelsen of a-small-lab and Jared Braiterman of Tokyo Green Space, are avid urban observers in their own rite. Berthelsen investigates alterations of space/objects at the public/private boundary in suburban Tokyo, while Braiterman explores the ways Tokyo-ites support bio-diversity, the environment, and human community all at once. Tokyo DIY Gardening seemed a natural result. Our Tokyo DIY Gardening project is about people having fun with nature in the city. Too many people think you need to be an expert to grow plants. We want to show that growing plants for food and decoration is easy, and that there are many ways to create space for gardens in even the densest and most crowded city. Theres also something social and even magical about improving our always imperfect public spaces, wrote Berthelsen in an email interview. Cooperatively creating a map reflected the inherent hands-on quality of gardening, while sharing and deepening their understanding of green space. The map also effectively mimicked, albeit on a small scale, the way these spaces public and private, large and small mosaic together to create Tokyos unique urban environment. Through the workshop people seemed to remember the places they love about

Tokyo and why, and connected their memories and experiences with those of others. In the process, they gained new perspective and shared common ground, wrote Berthelsen. >>

Tokyo has the potential to create change in the city through the quiet accumulation of urban elements rooted in everyday life.
(Kitayama, K. 2010. Preface. In Tokyo Metabolizing. TOTO Publishing, Tokyo, p11) >>

Experiencing Tokyo at foot, hand, nose and eye-level the senses, challenged by the rich intricacy of the design, roam back and forth over the entire fabric, captivated by a flower, an animal, a head, lingering where they please, retracing their paths, taking the whole only by the assimilation of its parts, not commanding the design at a single glance.
(after Mumford, L. 1961. The City in History. New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p 306 discussing medieval cities) >>

.the constant logic of the unselfconscious process of continuous adaptation & piecemeal building by bricoleur gardeners who make do with their heterogeneous repertoire of resources to explore connections and new uses through action according to the suggestive qualities of urban space.
(quote, Chris Berthelsen from text in progress) >> A Narrow Green Alley Author: Jared Braiterman http://tokyogreenspace.com What makes Tokyo residential districts very charming and perhaps surprising for foreigners are the narrow pedestrian walkways and small streets where pedestrians and bicyclists outnumber cars. Theres something pre-modern and non-rational about the web of small Tokyo lanes, with unpredictable turns and numerous dead ends. The densely packed two and three story buildings almost touch, with a mix of small apartments and single family houses. Neither walkways nor small streets are named, there is no grid, and small gardens and small shops are the only way to remember your path the next time.

The foliage is a mix of cultivated plants and volunteers. With rainfall plentiful year-round, it is easy to imagine the city reverting to jungle. If only there was less concrete. URL: http://tokyogreenspace.com/2009/04/20/a-narrow-green-alley/

Extract from an untitled essay on Tokyo Author: Chris Berthelsen http://a-small-lab.com .The urban framework of Tokyo was nurtured by a dependence on nature, a sensitive interaction which recognized the possibility of urban beauty sans heavy-handed human intervention. Trace the historical views of the city and you will rarely encounter (unlike European cities ) the suggestion that urban beauty should exclude nature and consist solely of artificial objects. The urban interior of Tokyo traditionally interacts on intimate terms with the expansive natural landscape outside (see e.g. Hiroshiges Meisho Edo Hyakkei (One hundred showplaces in Edo) and now conversely the lush human scale urban interiors interact with the vast city beyond - a mediated, informal mixing. Latterly and concurrently the urban landscape of the city was/is created under a vision of metabolism and renewal which resulted in a seemingly homogenous carpet of grains free-willed, free-standing architectural structures without any readily apparent relation to their surroundings which on closer inspection

appear chaotic, but are in fact the economic-rational product of Tokyos inherent (twenty-six-year) metabolic cycle of housing renewal. In Japan, where culture and mechanisms for large scale urban planning are relatively lacking, the point of transformation for the landscape is, then, the individual building, and further, its use - the individual defines the large scale. A collage of Jinnai (1995); Smith (1978); Kitayama (2010b); Tsukamoto (2010); Feireiss (2000).

Collage of Text by Jared Braiterman Collage by: Chris Berthelsen http://a-small-lab.com Tokyo is a dense place full of the iconic and prosaic, living nature and concrete structures, traces of the past and constant change (1). Viewed from its tallest towers, Tokyo is an endless expanse of concrete that stretches for hundreds of kilometers. With the exception of a few wonderful large parksmany of them gifts from the imperial familythe city has never benefited from strong central planning or a top-down promotion of green space. The result is a gray urban environment largely cut off from nature. Yet despite this overabundance of concrete and steel, Tokyo is home to an extraordinary mix of plant visionaries, educators, local governments and

ordinary citizens engaged in an effort to make a greener metropolis (2). Tokyo residents demonstrate remarkable ingenuity in maximizing small private spaces and limited open spaces. Most foreigners are unaware of Tokyo's human scale, remarkably safe streets and the profusion of tiny gardens often tended to by elderly residents. Tokyo residents actively care for their surroundings with sidewalk and roji (alley) plants blurring the division between private and public, and with vertical gardens thriving in even the narrowest spaces. Each season brings color, scent and edibles including persimmons, bitter melon, grapes and citrus. (3)

URL: (1) http://tokyogreenspace.com/2011/05/10/urban-layers-with-wild-space-in-the-m iddle-of-tokyo/ (2) http://metropolis.co.jp/features/feature/tokyo-green-space/ (3) http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20091127a1.html

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More than a city, I think I saw it as a landscape

(Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA) on his first impressions of Tokyo as a child living in the outer Tokyo suburbs of Kawasaki and Hachioji)

A collection of living organisms an extremely organic landscape, and thats something I rate very highly
(on his present impression of Tokyo as a democratic landscape in Kitayama, 2010d) >>

..the whole city, like a mosaic or a kaleidoscope, sparkled with myriad different images created by the particularity of individual locales, their terrain, and their histories.
(Jinnai, 1995:159) >>

Extract from and untitled essay on Tokyo Author: Chris Berthelsen http://a-small-lab.com A collective memory of a patchwork of hidden patterns of ownership (Shelton, 1999:44), developed rapidly and haphazardly (Smith, 1978:69, also Kerkhof, 2000) under high economic and demographic pressures, absent legal mechanisms, and resistance of local community to central planning (Echanove and Srivastava, 2008) now exists as egg and shell (urban village) neighbourhoods (high-rise on the perimeter, low rise on the interior) with virtually no open space (Echanove, 2007; Jonas, 2007:21; Tsukamoto, 2010) where gardeners, bird watchers, beekeepers, and neighborhood volunteers improve urban life through their everyday knowledge and passion (Braiterman, 2010). >>

Pick one spot in the city and begin to think of it as yours. It doesnt matter where, and it doesnt matter what.
(Auster, 2003)

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Urban dead space can be easily and economically transformed into living habitat, connecting our urban lives to the natural world. To change our cities, we must demand better of our leaders and our surroundings.
(Braiterman, 2010) >> Edo () + edible () = EDOBLE Author: Jess Mantell http://edoble.com Tokyo is a delicious city, not only for the Michelin guided, but for any soul walking through town. One doesn't just see scores of unique restaurants packed into tiny side streets, but also smells a home cooked meal wafting from a kitchen window, is bathed in the incense of a street corner yakitori vendor, and can reach up and pick a fresh, soft loquat from a street-side tree. It's a stimulating place and you wont go hungry here.

so too the scattered nuclei of Tokyos informal gardens provide foundation for everyday humane life - the multilayered units of urban space growing more refined and human as they grow closer to the daily lives of the people of the city (Jinnai, 1995:122). Tokyo uchi can thus be understood as a place-by-place (Thakera, 1989:66 1 ) plot-by-plot discontinuous and autonomous series of oases (Shelton, 1999:63).
(quote and diagram, Chris Berthelsen from text in progress)

In Shelton (1999:63).

(Constructed by Chris Berthelsen) >>

Personal Impacts of Urban Gardening (part of the workshop presentation) Authors: Jared Braiterman and Chris Berthelsen ..As people move, traverse, build and break (structures and relationships), are born, and pass away the personal impacts (motivations) of gardening extend over axes of time (immediate/long-term) and function (practical/emotional): Social Norms Everyone has a garden around here; Its what we do; Tradition My grandparents and parents cared for this garden; Memory I got this plant on a trip to Kamakura, and this one was given to me by my daughter; Community A starting point for discussions and friendship; Being out on the street tending the plants fosters daily interaction and communication; Affordability Its a cheap and fun hobby; Practicality Privacy, Shade, Food; Beauty Visual qualities; Mutual Independence Like a pet, or child; Pleasure Scent, Taste, Fun etc..

(based on interviews and informal chats with Tokyo gardeners, and discussion in Jonas, 2007:26-7) Frugality, Anticipation, Memory Author: Jared Braiterman http://tokyogreenspace.com On the way to the JR station, I passed a neighbor who was descending from her second story apartment and greeted her. Seemingly about 80 years old, she was carrying the bowl from her rice cooker. She showed surprised that this foreigner could speak (some) Japanese, and then proceeded to empty the water that had rinsed the rice onto her potted rose.

She was very proud of this blue-purple rose, which she told me her mother had given her. She also pointed out the potted loquat tree which would soon fruit and also an old grape vine tied up against the building. I admired her frugality in re-using water, her energy in traveling up and down the stairs, and her friendliness to this foreign neighbor. This story highlights how gardening is enmeshed with frugality, anticipation and memory. Frugality includes the water-reuse and also on-going maintenance of the plants over many years. Anticipation for what is emergent and what will soon be. And memory sparked by plants about who gifted them and what life was like back when they were planted. URL: http://tokyogreenspace.com/2009/04/22/frugality-anticipation-memory/ >>

Experience sensation, perception, conception EMOTION thought

(Diagram from Tuan, 1977:8) >> References Auster, P. 2003. Collected Prose. London, Faber and Faber. p285-7. Braiterman, J. 2010. Replacing Dead Urban Spaces with Living Habitat. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jared-braiterman/replacing-dead-urban-spac_b _547419.html

emotion THOUGHT

Echanove. M.S. 2007. The Tokyo model of urban development. Memo concerning the Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP) to the attention of the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA). Downloaded from http://www.urbanology.org/dharavi/The_Tokyo_Model_of_Urban_Development _Echanove_1.7.07.pdf Echanove. M.S. & Srivastava. R. 2008. Urban natures: of fields and forests. Downloaded from http://www.airoots.org/2008/05/urban-natures-of-fields-and-forests/ Feireiss, K. 2000. Preface, in eds. M. Terada and M. Kira. Japan: Towards TotalScape, Rotterdam, NAI Publishers, p5-6 Jinnai, H. 1995. Tokyo; A Spatial Anthropology. trans. Kimiko Nishimura. University of California Press, Berkley and Los Angeles, California. Jonas, M. 2007. Private use of public open space in Tokyo. A study of the hybrid landscape of Tokyo's informal gardens. Journal of Landscape Architecture. Autumn, 2007. Kerkhof, I. 2000. Farewell, in eds. M. Terada and M. Kira. Japan: Towards TotalScape, Rotterdam, NAI Publishers, p29-31.

Kitayama, K. 2010a. Preface. In Tokyo Metabolizing. TOTO Publishing, Tokyo, p11. Kitayama, K. 2010b. Changes in Urban Areas of Tokyo at the Beginning of the 21st Century. In Tokyo Metabolizing. TOTO Publishing, Tokyo, p14-27. Kitayama, K. 2010c. An interview with Yoshiharu Tsukamoto. In Tokyo Metabolizing. TOTO Publishing, Tokyo, p67-73. Kitayama, K. 2010d. An interview with Ryue Nishizawa. In Tokyo Metabolizing. TOTO Publishing, Tokyo, p101-107. Mumford, L. 1961. The City in History. New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Shelton, B. 1999. Learning from the Japanese City. Routledge, New York. Smith, 1978. Tokyo as an idea: An exploration of Japanese urban thought until 1945. Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol.4, No. 1 (Winter, 1978), 45-80. Downloadable from http://www.columbia.edu/~hds2/pdf/1978_Tokyo_as_an_Idea.pdf Tsukamoto, Y. 2010. Escaping the spiral of intolerance: fourth-generation houses and void metabolism. In Tokyo Metabolizing. TOTO Publishing, Tokyo,

p29-43. Tuan, Y. (1977). Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis/London, University of Minnesota Press.

(2) Photos of Physical Edition Packaging

(3) Hand Made Tokyo Document (2up Spreads)