co+labo radović     co+labo's Tomotake Miyagaki among top 5% at the AIJ Competition   

At the Architectural Institute of Japan's annual Architecture Competition, which brings together best Thesis projects from the previous school year, co+labo Masters student Miyagaki Tomotake has achieved an excellent result. His project which strongly advocates urban agriculture, with particular emphasis on beekeeping in dense urban areas of central Tokyo, was selected among the top 5%. Twelve works shortlisted from the pool of 281 entries will be presented at the final ceremony at Tokai University in September 2015. 

co+labo radović    co+labo+Kuma-Lab@Summer School Mostar ends with public lecture by Kengo Kuma and presentations in front of the Kuma, Radović, Boontharm, Zec Jury   

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co+labo radović   a joint co+labo+Kuma-Lab team@ Urban Synapse Summer School Mostar  

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co+labo radović  Slovenian exchange students completed an excellent semester at co+labo 

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co+labo radović   co+labo graduate students comleted Kazuyo Sejima's Miyajima Studio   

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co+labo radović   successful completion of co+labo undergraduate design-reserach project  

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co+labo radović   with urban cloud, co+labo team wins Keio Competition for HAPP Pavilion 

A team of co+labo Masters and undergraduate students, Ueno Wakataro, Tsuji Soyoka, Ayumu Magome and Kusano Shota have won the Keio University Hiyoshi Art and Performance Project - HAPP Competition 2015. Their imaginative and poetic design of the new pavilion will be built at the Hiyoshi Campus, making one of the attractions of the forthcoming Hiyoshi Campus Autumn Festival. The event is organised by Keio Research Center for the Liberal-Arts, with an aim to facilitate communication between the University and its broader community.

The main feature of our In the Cloud - on the Cloud pavilion is that it will be reusable, and thus become the next in the series of co+labo urban research pavilions which we use in investigations of quality of urban and architectural spaces, for data collection, various interactions with local communities and passers by and for various, Situationist-inspired, Debordean détournements and creative provocations. It is our hope that the Cloud will do what  co+labo urban table and  co+labo urban cupboard could not give - travel with us to many locations in Japan and abroad at which we operate and conduct our research and design-research.

co+labo was the winner of HAPP competition in 2011.

co+labo radović   exchange students from PoliMi completed their studies at co+labo  

Silvia Spallina and Salvatore Nastasi, students from Politecnico di Milano who have joined co+labo at the beginning of 2015, completed their studies at Keio University. They followed the steps of our first exchange students, Antonella Colistra and Sasamura Yoshiro, and gave an excellent contribution to our efforts to further internationalise and advance the level of studies of architecture and urban design at co+labo. In autumn the strategic partnership between Keio-PoliMi will be elevated to include Double Degree studies, when co+labo Suzuki Akitaka joins ABC programme at Lecco.
During their time at Keio, Salvatore and Silvia were involved in a number of co+labo activities, including SD design Studio Radović, design and research projects, Tokyo dérive with University of Canberra, and research trip to the Barn House, at Memu Meadows. Their hard work and positive energy will be fondly remembered and - they stay co+labo. 

Images from the co+labo Minami Sanriku Bridge Competition entry, the quality of which was a result of Silvia's, Salvatore's and Magome Aymu's excellent work. 

co+labo radović   co+labo fieldwork at the Barn House in LIXIL's Memu Meadows Centre 

In the period 12-15 July, a co+labo team, Sato Yuta, Miyagaki Tomotake, Ito Conan, Yamamori Hisamu, Silvia Spallina and Salvatore Nastasi (exchange students from Politecnico di Milano), has conducted regular research and maintenance work at the Barn House and collected additional information which should help co+labo pursue the ambition embedded in the competition-winning scheme - development of the concept of non-finito. The House was conceived as a “learning space”, open to evolving knowledge and gradual, incremental changes aimed at perpetual improvement – in response to both external environmental conditions and patterns of cohabitation between humans and horses. Ideally, it will be never completed. If properly used, it will live. Life will make it change, evolve and graciously age.

co+labo Barn House at Memu Meadows was produced as an intentional critique, in an effort to make that space speak in favour of combined environmental and cultural responsibility. The key message was that sustainability cannot be reduced to technological solutions, that there always is much more to it. The Barn House asks us to think about the totality of place, and thus the totality of architecture - and not, and never, only about simply energy efficient building.

co+labo radović   UniCanberra@co+labo dérive exhibited in Harajuku 2 

On Monday 29.6 the exhibition of recordings from the co+labo+UniCanberra dérive sessions, drifts into the urban fabric of Tokyo opened at Design Festa, Harajuku - Under the title Ordinary in Extraordinary. A select group of friends, associates, passers by joined us there to share the results and pleasure of a job well done, new friendships and ideas about the next steps in collaboration between the two schools.

co+labo radović    UniCanberra@co+labo dérive exhibited in Harajuku 1 

On Monday, 29 June 2015 at 7.00 p.m., the exhibition of recordings from the co+labo+UniCanberra dérive sessions, drifts into the urban fabric of Tokyo opens at Design Festa, Harajuku - Under the title Ordinary in Extraordinary. 

The material was produced during the two intensive weeks of explorative drifts, which sought and question binary oppositions implied in the pair ordinary-extraordinary. The exhibition summarises a number of subjective, individual experiences provoked by spaces, people, colours and sounds of Jiyugaoka, Yanesen, Sumidagawa, MOMAT/Palace, Kikuzaka and Kichijoji. During the fieldwork, the bodies acted as metronomes and then, in discussions and presentation sessions, the participants sought their own ways to express and visualise the experienced.

If you are in Tokyo and have time, please join us there +.

「 Ordinary in Extraordinary」は、慶應義塾大学ダルコ・ラドヴィッチ研究室(co+labo)とキャンベラ大学合同で行われたワークショップの成果を展示するものです。
初めて東京を訪れたキャンベラ大学の学生と、東京に拠点を置くco+laboの学生たちは、「 dérive – 漂流」という手法を用いたフィールドワークを行った。このフィールドワークを通じて「ordinary/extraordinary (日常／非日常)」の二面性 を探求した。 そこからデザイン、建築、そして“都市”の概念や定義のあり方を思考した。

展示されている作品は自由が丘、谷中・根津・千駄木（谷根千）、隅田川、吉祥寺、菊坂、皇居／国立近代美術館における  「漂流」を通して、空間、人、色、音などによって呼び起こされる主観的な体験の集積である。学生たちは、感じるままに都市を漂流し、そこで体験した都市と自身との呼応を表現した。with co+labo 

co+labo radovićUniCanberra@co+labo urban research workshop started

A welcome party, introductory lectures, formation of international dérive groups, and first drifts into the urban fabric of Tokyo have started on Tuesday, 16 June, with co+labo students taking the guests to the locations which they are investigating within our various ongoing projects. Regular updates of those activities, seen through the eyes of Milica's students from the University of Canberra, can be found here +.

Snapshot 1 - the atmosphere at the welcome party in Hiyoshi

Snapshot 2 - several slides form Darko's introductory lecture
and some of his key-words and names: dérive, Guy Debord, Situationist International, Tokyo, co+labo, Measuring the non-Mesurable,  Maurice Merleau-Ponty, chiasma, five senses (or more, Michel Serres), Being Singular Plural, Jean-Luc Nancy ... in the search of urban quality ... + "go out and co+laborate!"

co+labo radović     Milica Muminović+University of Canberra at co+labo   

Over the last two weeks of June, co+labo will be hosting the team from University of Canberra, and conducting joint urban investigation project – another dérive in Tokyo. 

This visit is very special for us, as Australian team is headed by co+labo's own Dr Milica Muminović, who has obtained her PhD at Keio in 2013. Milica’s students add value and another cultural layer to our ongoing, Debordean investigations of the urban. Together, will be exploring spaces and practices of everyday life of Tokyo which are, for some of the team members, ordinary, while for others - truly extraordinary, and enjoying the moments of various encounters with the Other. 

We hope that this project only opens another page in our collaboration with universities and schools of architecture and urban design from Darko's Land Down Under.

Milica's poster, below, is illustrated with images from an old Tokyo dérive, conducted with Davisi Bontharm's students from the National University of Singapore in 2010

co+labo radović   co+labo Anatomy of Islands design at exhibitions in Zagreb and Graz     

As regularly reported on this blog, since 2012 co+laboradović is participates in the top quality symposia and workshops Anatomy of Islands, which are regularly held at the Croatian island of Vis. The Anatomy, initiated by the well-known urbanist Boško Budisavljević who lives at the island, is co-organised and managed by a number of motivated individuals and enthusiasts, local groups and local government – all joined by strong desire to imagine and create better, place- and culture-specific futures at, and for their island.

Each September, through presentations and robust discussions between the locals, visiting academics, professionals and good-willing visitors, Anatomy of Islands symposia provide venue for sharing and advancing diverse knowledges about opportunities for alternative development and production of space at this and other, comparable islands.

Inspired by the symposia, the Anatomy workshops burst with creativity, driven by fine mix of international students and academics from both the near-by and far-away universities – from the Universities of Split, Zagreb and Ljubljana, via Graz and Paris, to Tokyo. Over the last three years, co+labo also contributed to that mix by inviting to Vis a number of our friends and close collaborators – Davisi Boontharm (Keio and Sophia University, Tokyo), Kengo Kuma and his laboratory from the University of Tokyo (which, along co+labo students, participated in all three Anatomy of Islands conducted so far), Kazuyo Sejima (Keio and SANAA), Jose Puppim de Oliveira (United Nations University, Tokyo), David Sim (Gehl Architects, Copenhagen), Luisa Bravo and Simone Garagnani (Universities of Bologna and Florence).

These workshops advance design-research practice by inviting brave, explorative and, at the same time, concrete, realistic thinking and action that can challenge development patterns which destroy environmentally and culturally precious, fragile environments worldwide.Three generations of co+labo have contributed to those efforts so far, and we stay committed to this valuable project. 

Fine design work produced within the Anatomy of Islands workshops in the period 2012-14 has generated an interesting exhibition. After the inaugural presentation in Zagreb, Croatia in February 2015, the Anatomy of the Island exhibition is now in Graz, Austria. We hope to host it in Tokyo, soon.

co+labo radović Sejima Design Studio-truly international teaching and learning experience   

At the Faculty of Science and Technology, Masters Design Studios are taught by distinguished visiting professors. This semester, Sejima Kazuyo teaches Studio A, supported by architects Suo (SANAA) and Kondo (Tetsuo Kondo Architects), and civil engineer Shibata (Arup Japan).

What is special for us is that more than half of the enrolled 19 students in semester 1 2015 are from co+laboradović. What is also new is that international students from Radović and Almázan Laboratories make this studio the most culturally diverse in the Faculty - ever. We see this as another important moment, a small but significant contribution to Keio’s Top Global University ambitions.

co+labo radović       co+labo in Rome - Biennale Spazio Publico 2015 and MaPS@MAXXI     

In late May, co+labo took part in two exciting events in Rome – BiennaleSpazio Publico, which was hosted by Universita Roma Tre, and an International Symposium and Exhibition MaPS@MAXXI, held at the Museum of Art of XXI Century. Keio University was represented by Darko Radović and Davisi Boontharm (Keio and Sophia University), co+labo research students Wakataro Ueno and Sotaro Miyatake, and Sunao Yamaguchi from Mitsukura Laboratory (with which, since Measuring the non-Measurable research project 2011-14, co+labo collaborates on development of ways to better understand complex relationships between the quality of urban and architectural space and human emotions).

At Biennale, Darko and Davisi contributed to lively discussions within the session Public Space, Places and Practices of Everyday Life - Conversazioni sullo spazio pubblico, while the team of students was exploring the performance of EEG (electro-encephalograph developed in Mitsukura Laboratory) in detecting emotional responses to both real and variously represented (in Biennale exhibitions) urban and architectural spaces.

At MAXXI, co+labo contributed to the Symposium with the paper entitled “On quality of public (or, not-so-public) spaces in Tokyo - making, living and exploring Kuhonbutsugawa Ryokudô” and two posters – “public, not-so-public, livable, lovable spaces and other peculiarities of Tokyo”. co+labo posters were part of the MaPS@MAXXI exhibition, which was curated by Luisa Bravo (Italy) and Manfredo Manfredini (New Zealand). The exhibition included presentations of the cities of Athens, Auckland, Bangkok, Brisbane, Buenos Aires, Byblos, Changsha, Genova, Hong Kong, Jerusalem, Mostar, Moutallos, Nicosia and – Tokyo. Those exhibition provided physical setting for an exciting MaPS@MAXXI Symposium. co+labo radović and Mitsukura Lab students have also used the exhibition to further advance our understanding of various opportunities and constraints for using EEG for assessment of graphically represented quality of architectural and urban space. Inputs from the experiments from both Biennale and MaPS@MAXXI will help Radović and Mitsukura Laboratories in further joint research. 

La Biennale and MaPS provided the participants with opportunities to learn about the best and the latest in production and thinking about public space and facilitated development of new contacts and academic friendships, and co+labo radović stays open to further initiatives by City, Space, Architecture – an enthusiastic organisation whom we have first met at their excellent Past Present and Future of Public Space Conference in Bologna 2014.