ADS-C 2020 Hiromasa Shirai Studio

Urban ex-Nature as material and space

Re-consider new way of utilising “natural” resources in the city

Once people went to woods and cut trees to build their own homes. Yet, this does not happen today in particular urban area. Wood materials used in architecture are standardised as certain sizes. In most cases, wooden walls are constructed with 910x1820mm laminated wooden panel, and wooden columns are materialised with several pre-defined size of timber wood in Japan. As such, rare-natural materials are hardly
available in the city.
Furthermore, nature in the city is also different from the rare-natural settings. Parks, for example, can be defined as artificial nature created by human, and other “natural” settings, such as urban farming has been developed in the different way from its original environmental settings.
These conditions raise a question asking what “nature” means in the city today. This studio therefore aims to re-consider natural resources for architecture in urban area, and try explore new potentials of “urban ex-nature” as material and space.

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