The Daniels Faculty’s summer Global Architecture program offers graduate students an opportunity to study abroad with a design and research-oriented focus.

In 2016, students traveled to Japan to participate in the Hida Smartcraft Studio, a collaborative design workshop involving faculty and students from University of Toronto, Parsons School of Design, National Chaio Tung University of Taiwan, and Japan’s Institute of Advanced Media and Science.

Situated northeast of Tokyo in a mountainous region of Japan, Hida’s primary industry is sustainable forestry and wood carpentry. Traditional wood joinery techniques that structure most of ancient Japanese architecture originated here. In recent years, due to cheaper prices of lumber from Southeast Asia and the lack of interest from younger generations to learn traditional craftsmanship, the Hida forests are at risk of falling into neglect while ancient woodworking techniques such as kumiki are being forgotten.

Working in inter-school teams, students developed collaborative prototypes equally invested in ancient craft and current technology. Hida Smartcraft studio challenged a cohort of international students to:

• Learn and practice traditional Japanese wood carpentry techniques;
• Experience local Hida culture and identify potential strategies for social or economic advancement;
• Experiment with basic IoT sensor technology to investigate the dovetailing of user responsive sensors embedded in wood products.

FACULTY

WH VIVIAN LEE University of TorontoDaniels Faculty of Landscape, Architecture, and Design

KYLE LI The New School, Parsons School of Design

JUNE-HAO HOU National Chaio Tung University of Taiwan

SHIGERU KOBAYASHI Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences, Japan

KENJI WADAGifu Academy of Forest Science and Culture

STUDENT TEAMS

JAVED KHAN (UT)
MARTIN LUI (UT)
CHIEH PING CHEN (PSD)
CHUN HENG LIN (NCTU)
KANA HAGIRI, TA

YIMING CHEN (UT)
RICHARD FREEMAN (UT)
CHUCK KUAN (PSD)
CHUN CHAN CHIEN (NCTU)
HIDEAKI ASAOKA, TA

BRANDON BERGEM (UT)
BILLY KC LEE (UT)
QINQIN YANG (PSD)
CHENG WEI HUNG (NCTU)
HIROAKI OHBA, TA

PENGXIAN MENG (UT)
GENEVIEVE SIMMS (UT)
MIXUAN LI (PSD)
CHILI CHENG (NCTU)
CHIEN I LEE (NCTU)
MASAYASU GOTO, TA

MENGJIE CHENG (UT)
SAMSON TAM (UT)
RAY WU (UT)
CHUN YUNG WANG (NCTU)
KAZUYA SANO, TA