HOGI Fellowship and My Trip to Japan
In May I was fortunate to learn that I’d been awarded the HOGI Traveling Fellowship through the Dallas AIA and the Miyama family.
I am pursuing an investigation into Japanese transit centers in an attempt to understand their success and hopefully, to help the profession apply those concepts to TODs and mixed-use developments in the U.S. Unlike in the U.S. and many western cities whose town planning centers around civic buildings and historic (or reinvented) town squares, many Japanese communities have evolved around the train station, which functions not only as a hub for mass transit, but also as a center for social, retail and other vital communal functions.
You can view my original proposal here which details the stations I plan to visit, and why I selected them.
There are two portions to the trip. The Miyama family has been gracious enough to arrange a tour of Tokyo through the first half of the trip, which will include visits to Japanese architecture firms, developers and project both complete and currently under contruction.
To start off this blog, I will be documenting each day of my trip (internet access permitting) with thoughts, photographs and observations. You are welcome to follow me here or at my Twitter account @mondo_tiki_man which I will also be updating.
Comments are appreciated.
