A Unique Place That Fosters Creativity

My earliest memory is playing with Lego blocks from around the age of three. Until I was in high school, my birthday present was always Lego blocks. I discovered Minecraft in junior high school and started using a 3D printer in high school. Unlike Lego blocks, which are used to create things in the real world, I found joy in the infinite possibilities of digital creation. I was also fascinated by the game's worldview, where you acquire new abilities as you progress. I began to think it would be interesting to be able to move back and forth between the real and virtual worlds through technologies like 3D printers.

While visiting open campuses of prospective universities, I became convinced that SFC was the place where I would enjoy my student life. I attended a mock lecture, became fascinated with the research groups, and met senior students who made me think, "I want to be a university student like them." I had a gut feeling that this was a place where I could further broaden my interests and dramatically improve my expertise, as there are many people similar to me.

After enrolling, I joined theHiroya Tanaka Lab, which had impressed me at theOpen Research Forum. I like the sense of balance here—while precisely honing my engineering skills, I can also use them to create things that are useful to people and incorporate cutting-edge design. I feel that I am in a very privileged environment.

I am working on creating the "Machicad System" ¹ in a joint research project. This is a free web service that realizes the opinions and requests of city residents through 3D-printed objects. It represents a real city in a voxel space, which is made of rectangular blocks, allowing anyone to participate in city planning with simple operations. Data freely created by residents, such as for rest areas and playgrounds, is printed out by our members. The Tanaka Lab has large-scale printers capable of outputting furniture-sized objects, so we can install the objects everyone creates in the digital space throughout the city.

As the project progressed, it took on a new meaning. We are now moving in the direction of creating a mirror world within "Machicad" from data scanned from the real three-dimensional space (the city). We plan to utilize this for city planning by creating various interactions while moving back and forth between the real world and the mirror world.

In 2020, we decided to hold theTanabata Festival online, a major SFC event. While online events tend to focus on video streaming, we brainstormed to create a new format that would generate interactive engagement. We released a virtual space with 3D data of the campus and implemented fun features like food stalls, attractions, and fireworks. Overcoming various technical constraints, we were able to hold an event where 7,000 visitors' avatars could interact.

During the pandemic, although I couldn't go to the university, the people around me were working to keep the community alive by taking new actions online and striving to create interesting spaces. My research group's activities were also fulfilling, with daily trial and error from home, so I was never bored. The COVID-19 pandemic has also created new opportunities for creation.

The senior students in my lab are all people I can respect in every aspect—technology, ideas, and research. No matter which direction you take, there is always a reliable pioneer to turn to. I gain a lot just by chatting with them, and it motivates my activities. Another major advantage of SFC is the wide range of specialized equipment available for use. There is also active exchange with other labs, and we can receive meaningful feedback from professors in related fields. Joint research with external companies is also common, which opens up paths to social implementation that would be impossible on my own.

Besides my research group, I belong to a club called A&T (Art and Technology). Here, too, it is a tradition for senior students to closely support junior students in their creative projects. At SFC, individual and small-group projects are always running concurrently, and the knowledge and skills built up within them are shared at the research group level, beyond team boundaries. The awareness of passing on valuable wisdom is ingrained throughout the entire campus.

I gain new knowledge by actually getting my hands dirty. I have a personality that wants to try everything, so I want to gain more experience to be able to create even more interesting things. The breadth of the world I have come to know because of SFC far exceeds my imagination.

¹ Joint research members: Yukako Yazaki (third-year student, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies), Yusaku Arita (second-year student, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies), Takumi Moriya (Part-time Researcher, Graduate School of Media and Governance)