Collaboration: YAPPESU (JP)

Participants: 12
Location: Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture

Duration: 5 hours (afternoon)

Ishinomaki was one of the areas worst affected by the devastating tsunami in 2011, which claimed 3,500 lives, displaced 50,758 people and destroyed 20,000 buildings in the town. Five years since the tragedy, 451 emergency housing units in Ishinomaki remain occupied as victims are unable to vacate to new accommodation, mostly out-of-town apartments beyond most budgets.

Freiraum Kollektive ran the afternoon workshop Reconstructing the City in a communal building of an emergency housing settlement in Ishinomaki. It aimed to gather women together to provide a safe space for conversation about the ongoing reconstruction while experimenting with creating 3D space from wooden sticks.

Each 2D base was laid out as an empty plot from a current map of Ishinomaki. 3D objects were then built by joining sticks and then adding coloured paper to decorate. The models were then hung. Participants kept the structures as ornaments or gave them to friends. The afternoon closed with tea and cakes.

Reconstructing the City was a milestone on our trans-Asian project, Mapping Architectural Resilience on the Silk Road.