March 26, 2014
Masahiro Sasaki, a first-year master's student in the Graduate School of Media and Governance and a member of the Shohei Matsukawa Laboratory, has won the prestigious Gold Award at the 25th JIA Kanagawa Architecture Week Yokohama Architecture Festival ~CROSS×CROSS~ Student Graduation Design Competition.
This competition, the "Student Graduation Design Competition," is hosted by the Japan Institute of Architects (JIA) Kanagawa Chapter. It featured an exhibition and public review of 34 graduation projects from seven universities in Kanagawa Prefecture.
Mr. Sasaki also won the "Maki Prize" at the "Maki and Ito Prize," SFC's internal graduation project review. It is a remarkable achievement for him to have now received high acclaim outside the university as well.
Furthermore, he has earned the right to compete in the JIA National Student Graduation Design Competition, not just within Kanagawa Prefecture, and his future success is highly anticipated.
Theme and Evaluation Points of the Project:
The proposal, titled "Public Mall," was a proposal for a system itself that supports design by utilizing information technology, aiming to democratize architectural design. While it was an unconventional proposal compared to mainstream architectural design, it ultimately won the award for its approach to addressing the underlying issues.
Comments from Masahiro Sasaki:
The graduation design competition was a valuable opportunity to reaffirm the contemporary significance of my work by comparing my proposal with those from other universities. I proposed a system with the theme of redesigning the design process for public facilities, opening up the design itself—which has traditionally been planned by a single architect—to a wide range of people, including ordinary citizens and public institutions. The core of this proposal is how to build a design support mechanism within the information space and as a social system. The broad perspectives and knowledge that SFC as a whole possesses regarding information technology, social design, and architecture itself were extremely helpful. I would like to express my deep gratitude to the faculty members who provided critiques (esquisses) and to the junior students who helped with the production.