AUTHORS’ DESCRIPTION:
The project is located in the southern part of Tokyo, Japan. The area is adjacent to Hamarikyu Gardens where the Skyscraper wants to stand out against the adjoining buildings. The project’s goal is to show and help the huge problem of high suicide’s rate among young people (6-24) in the city of Tokyo.
This problem has affected Japanese population for many decades; the origin of this vast problematic, according to our analysis, lies in the society itself. Individualistic culture, lack of people’s care and strong competition inside the educational system are driving young people to develop strong feelings of anxiety and pressure to stand out in order to gain a position in the world of work. The fear of failure is not challenged with the support of family and friends but, on the contrary, is repressed until it becomes fatal. Indeed the day with the highest number of suicides is the first day of school.
That’s why the location of the building has also been chosen according to the distance with the main schools.
Moreover, Japanese culture has not a concept of soul as we know in occidental culture, so that suicide is related with honor and pride, and seen as a solution preferred to failure. Such an idea of suicide comes from the figure of the Samurai, which in Japanese culture prefers to die instead of been captured not to dishonor the family.
A place for young people: Our project wants to help this situation offering young people a place where they can freely develop their personal skills, even in the field of art, which is nearly not considered in the scholar system. The building has the function of community center; growing from the base through the length of the building, the different activities are distributed in opaque-glass-boxes. The center will give children the opportunity to meet new people and share their passions. This will eventually decrease the suicide’s rate. Wooden Modules: The second way we intend to help the problem is using the facade of our skyscraper to show the real suicide’s rate. Our intention is to assemble wooden-cube-module outside of the glass boxes, according to a fixed number calculated every year with the average of monthly suicides. These modules are mechanically assembled with an automate technology programmed with the live information of suicides’ rate. The modules have different sizes from the outside to the inside: they are outside related to the urban scale, and inside to the human one. The project will not give people just a hope for the future, it will give people a future.