co+laboradović  co+labo undergraduates completed 2016 architectural+urban design studio 

This year within the final undergraduate Seizu III, the Studio Radović topic was Tokyo Ground-floor Project: Ginza and the right to the city. co+labo's Daisuke Kobayashi, Mei Morimoto, Mayuko Mikogami, Keitaro Onishi, Yasue Takasu and Yohei Yamashita (below) have explored a wide-range of themes related to our overarching principles of environmentally and culturally responsible design. After the successful defense, their projects now qualify for the Keio Undergraduate Thesis Design Competition, to be held in early autumn.

The Jury Seizu III members were Keio Professors Almazán, Kishimoto, Radović (subject coordinator) and, as a guest, Professor Davisi Boontharm (Sophia and Keio Universities). 

co+laboradović  special guest lecture - André Correa do Lago@co+labo on Tuesday 21 June 
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co+laboradović    co+labo OB-kai, gathering of former+current students+friends in Shibuya   

Since 2009, co+labo has evolved into a fairly large network of former + current students, members + associates, colleagues + friends, celebrating our plus, that binding, collaborative symbol from our logo, which signifies the core values bringing us together. On Sunday, all of those who were nearby and free, came to Shibuya for a dinner, drinks, discussions and laughs (a lot of fun and laughing, although the picture may suggest otherwise).

In Vers une achitecture de la jouissance, Henry Lefebvre (the foundational thinker behind the ethos and praxis of co+labo) wrote about "the dignity of bearing the + sign, that of joy, happiness, enjoyment, of sensuality - the sign of life"*, thus bringing together, in a single sentence, many of the key-words which define the aims of our laboratory.  

When designing our logo, Vuk added another, all-important nuance - the colour of life.

For us, as throughout the Lefebvre's theory of space, "architectural practices are to be conceptualized as transversal, that is to say cutting across ontological categories and contributing to all phases of research, programming, designing, construction, and the continuous appropriation of buildings."**

* Stanek, Łukasz, "Introduction", Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment, University of Minnesota Press, 2014 (p. lix)     

** Henri Lefebvre, Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment, University of Minnesota Press, 2014 (p30)       

  

co+laboradović   Oslo@co+labo - special guest lecture at Yagami Campus on Friday 10 June 
Members of Oslo School of Architecture and Design, the winners of the 2015 LIXIL Universities Competition, are back in Tokyo, for official inauguration of their Hokkaido project. During their visit, Professor Neven Fuchs-Mikac, academic leader of the Norwegian team, will visit co+labo and deliver special lecture, covering a decade of his design studio at AHO.  

co+laboradović     more, more, more co+labo glimpses into future Japanese architecture    
One of the often repeated descriptions of how co+labo operates (one which almost became our unofficial motto) is: "more, always more!". In this semester, under the coordination of co+labo's Sano Satoshi, that principle is applied to the guest lecture programme of our Studio B. The intensity of encounters between the students and young, up-and-coming Japanese architects is not slowing down. 
On 8 May, we will be hosting Maru Architects Yohei Tanako and Sahiko Morita, and Levi Architecture's Jun Nakagawa.

  

co+laboradović        presentation by Ivan Filipović, new research student at co+labo                 
Since the start of this school year, co+labo is stronger by one new research student. In April, Ivan Filipović joined us as a visiting international student, with an intention to enroll Keio PhD programme at co+labo. On 24 May, he held a  seminar, presenting the current version of his research proposal and a very interesting professional career with several projects which frame his interest in fortress-like urban enclosures, such as embassies. Ivan's project promises to add new dimension to one of the central co+labo preoccupations - explorations of interactions between public and private spaces and practices which make the urban.    

co+laboradović             Studio B guest lecture by Tamao Hashimoto                                          
On 25 May 2016 Tamao Hashimoto, a lecturer at Geidai will be back at Keio, delivered a guest lecture within our Graduate Design Studio B, and then took part in design review of the projects developed in Sano, Saikawa, Meijo and Kondo groups. 
Tamao-san was a valuable member of co+labo research team Measuring the non-Measurable  (2011-14). He is a regular contributor to our laboratory and various associated architecture/urban design activities. 

co+laboradović     co+labo research seminar - Anil Thakur and his work about Chandigarh    

Dr Anil Thakur, a passionate researcher of the capital city of Indian state of Punjab and one of the much celebrated icons of modernist urbanism, Chandigarh, visited co+labo and presented key points of his lifelong work. Instead of providing yet another angle at the monumental part of the city, Anil's emphasis was on irresolvable complexity of the struggles which for decades keep on reshaping the residential areas of the modern(ist) capital. The follow-up discussion addressed a number of themes which will continue to resonate in co+labo - the richness and diversity of expressions of urban life across cultures,  impacts of imported modernisms on everyday life and, unavoidably, the controversies which still surround the towering figure of the great master, Le Corbusier. Darko reminded of Pierre Francastel and his point that we might never be able to say enough of good, nor bad about Charles-Édouard Jeanneret. 

Anil lives in Melbourne, working on his book about the changing built environments of Chandigarh.