co+labo radović         co+labo's Suzuki Akitaka @ Politecnico di Milano                                  

First year Masters student at co+labo, Aki Suzuki has started his Keio-PoliMi Double Degree studies at Politecnico's ABC Campus in Lecco. This indeed is a big step for both Aki-san and for co+labo. His move marks the opening of a new stage in an already rich collaboration between two great universities in the fields of architecture and urbanism. From an initiative by Professors Marco Imperadori and Darko Radović, over the last several years collaboration between Politecnico di Milano and Keio University steadily grew to include regular visits, exchange of students, exchange of staff to this, first full Double Degree candidature in the fields related to production of space. 

Aki-san was well received by Professors Imperadori and Masera, (recent Visiting Research Fellow at Keio/co+labo, greeted and guided by his old friends, Arch. Antonella Colistra and PoliMi students Silvia Spallina and Salvatore Nastasi - who all also studied at co+labo radović. Our Suzuki Moe and Miyagaki Tomo recently visited Milano, to make sure that Aki-san is settling in well (... and, by the way, also visited Triennale). 

In parallel to this, significant efforts are being done to start ambitious, collaborative research in the near future. We will keep you posted ... In the meantime - tutti auguri a nostro Aki-san!  

co+labo radović                    co+labo @ Anatomy of the Islands ... 4th time  ... report 3           

Anatomy of the Islands design-reserach Workshop has finished on 26 September, with public presentation and discussion. Students from Graz, Ljubljana, Split, Tokyo and Vienna, who were organised in seven groups, presented their ideas how to deal with the problems of depopulation and excessive mass tourism, and spatial projections of other, more environmentally and culturally responsible ways of synthesis between global challenges and local resources - at the example of the Island of Vis, its two beautiful towns, agricultural hinterland and the pristine coast.

For last two days, Keio team was joined by Tetsuo Kondo, an exciting young architect, a regular contributor to co+labo. 

(fragments from some of the final Anatomy of Islands presentations)

co+labo students Magome, Narumi, Sato, Tajima and Yamamori continued their journey and on the way back visited Barcelona. Jaume Carné, an excellent urbanist from the Catalan capital and Darko's old friend, gave them a very special tour, combining some of the regular sites which he shows those who join his excellent BiciCulturaBCN tours with useful feedback and advice about their own investigations of urban quality at co+labo. 

(BCN bike tour, BiciCulturaBCN - warmly recommended by co+labo to all who love cities, urban culture, architecture and Barcelona, and its passionate mind and heart - Mr Jaume Carné)

The other two co+labo students decided to stay at the Balkans, Carolina exploring the Adriatic Coast in early Autumn and Vedrana doing some PhD fieldwork in her Bosnia.   

co+labo radović                    co+labo @ Anatomy of the Islands ... 4th time  ... report 2            

Following an exciting  Anatomy of Islands Symposium, design-research Workshop is focusing at the paths towards alternative, environmentally and culturally responsible tourism at concrete locations of the ancient island of Vis.

Seven student teams from Austria, Croatia, Japan and Slovenia, under the guidance of an interdisciplinary team of mentors from Keio University, Sophia University, Universities of Graz, Ljubljana, Maribor, Split, Tokyo and Vienna are seeking innovative combinations of the latest in environmentally and culturally tourism, as presented and debated at the Anatomy of the Islands Symposium, and radical, alternative architectural, urban, rural and territorial design. 

co+labo radović                    co+labo @ Anatomy of the Islands ... 4th time   ... report 1          

This September, co+labo radović and Kengo Kuma Laboratory for the fourth time jointly participate in the Anatomy of the Islands Symposium, which will be followed by an design-research Workshop. 

Keio team is even stronger, then before, with professors Yasue Mitsukura, Akira Mita and Hiroto Kobayashi (and his students) joining the event. For the first time, students from both Yagami and Shonan Fujisawa Campus will participate in the Anatomy of Islands Workshop.

co+labo radović  preparations for co+labo's late summer of overseas academic explorations

As regular co+labo participation at the Academy of the Islands Symposium and Workshop approaches, on 8 September 2015 Darko held a lecture within the Split - an Urbanistic Case for 21st Century.

The lecture was followed by passionate discussion and a couple of well-publicised interviews. The emphasis was on the key values guiding co+labo radović and the roles those values and our approaches to thinking and production of space could play in defining the future of the city of Split and similar jewels of urbanity, which are under the threat of banalisation through uncontrolled tourism and overdevelopment worldwide.

"Spektar" - weekend special of Slobodna Dalmacija. 

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