Announcement of Results for the “Urban Public Space Design Competition”
On March 12, a public second-round judging session for the “Urban Public Space Design Competition,” organized by Nikken Sekkei, was held at the Nikken Sekkei Tokyo Building. The five judges were Takayuki Kishii, Ryue Nishizawa, Shunsaku Miyagi, Toshiya Yoshimi, and Tadao Kamei of our firm’s President and CEO.
From a total of 355 entries submitted from Japan and abroad, 10 proposals were selected in the first round of judging. Following presentations, a question-and-answer session, and a public judging session, one Grand Prize, three Excellence Awards, and six Honorable Mentions were selected.
<Message from Tadao Kamei, Representative of the Organizers>
We organized this competition for students in various fields—including architecture and urban planning—both in Japan and abroad, in the hope that it would serve as an opportunity to consider the city from a broad, interdisciplinary perspective.
All of the proposals that passed the first-round screening offered fresh perspectives. Ranging from highly architectural approaches to those addressing systems and legal frameworks, they demonstrated the broad scope of what public space encompasses and covered a variety of scales.
I was particularly impressed by the Grand Prize-winning entry, “A Small Street Corner Emerging,” for its approach of developing an urban design concept based on a triangular plot of land—a remnant of an old waterway.
We hope this competition will serve as a stimulus for thinking about architecture and the city as a seamless whole.
Grand Prize: “A Small Street Corner That Comes to Life”
Kousuke Omura, Asako Deda, Akihiro Ueda (Shinshu University Graduate School)
Excellence Award: “The Hill That Remembers the City” by Takumi Watanabe (Osaka City University Graduate School)
Excellence Award: “Phantom Surface” by James Charles Mak and Jongwon Na (AA School)
Excellence Award: “The Ephemeral Line” by Mohammad Ali Eimar (Tokyo Institute of Technology Graduate School)
Honorable Mention: “Urban Sound Orchestra”
Junpei Asai (University of California, Berkeley) | Masuo Shimoda, Yoshio Fujiwara (Tokyo Institute of Technology Graduate School) | Eri Takeda (Waseda University, Graduate School)
Honorable Mention: “A Place for Memories” — Kai Nagatomi, Sayaka Ueda, Yutaro Yamamoto (Nihon University)
Honorable Mention: “Tomorrow” by Ziying Shan, Hanyue Lu, Xinru Li, and Kun Dai (Shenyang Jianzhu University)
Honorable Mention: “A City with Full Street Frontage Through Redevelopment” Yuta Shikaya (Nihon University Graduate School) | Ryosuke Kanai (Nihon University)
Honorable Mention: “Railroad Crossing Paradise” by Hiroki Kondo and Kyosuke Kuroda (Tokyo University of Science)
Honorable Mention: “When Plants Become Constituent Elements of Architecture” — Hayato Ishizuka (Graduate School, Shibaura Institute of Technology)
<Scenes from the Judging Session>
