MEMORIAL. FUKUSHIMA

 

An Examination Project. Konstfack, 2012 (MFA). 

The memorial room is designed to function as a monument to honour the victim and to remind the tragedy in future but also it is a room where visitors can have personal praying ritual or contemplation over the incident. The location setting is a hilltop about 2km from the cost in Minami-Soma city, Fukushima (Altitude 235.4°, Azimuth 33.2°), where many from the evacuation area moved to after the nuclear contamination.

I chose to use the direction of sun light at the occurrence of the earthquake as an axis and orientation of the space and as foundation of shapes in the room. Coincidentally, the sunlight points toward the sea which swept away thousands of lives. My attempt was to use symbolic meanings of the time, the sun, the sea and the landscape and connect them through the experience of the room. The memorial itself can refer to and represent the incident in whole.

 

landscape

Experience of the room on the memorial day
2015 March 11th
4 years after the catastrophe
Minami-Soma city, Fukushima
‘‘The building stands on the top of a hill. From a distance, I see a shiny thing on the top of the building but I cannot see what it is. After walking through a narrow slope enclosed by trees, I arrive at the hilltop. The landscape opens and the view widens and now, I can feel the sea breeze. I see the building and the dark sea behind . All the shadow is pointing towards the building and the sea. My shadow also, it walks ahead me towards the building.

Stepping inside. The room become darker as I walk towards the gold room in the middle. On the ceiling, there is a metal sphere. As I look at it for a while, I notice many marks on the metal surface. Almost like a burn mark. Some are lines, the others are just dots. Then, I see a line appears on the surface, as if someone is burning the metal from the other side, and it slowly moves towards the center of the building.

Around 14.46. After placing flowers on the edge of the water in front of the gold room, I hear a sound of a siren* from the nearest village telling me that it is 14.46. Suddenly a very strong light enter in the gold room. I close my eyes and put hands together and think about the day. Even my eyes shut, I feel the light. I think about what happened at the day and pray towards the room and the sea.

After a few moments the light gradually weakens and line on the surface appears again on the metal surface and continue to grow towards the other side of the sphere.’’

*In Japan, on the memorial day of a catastrophe, sound of sirens mark a silent prayer to victims

 

Research ( Extracts from thesis report) 

Proposal and draft ideas

Science mythology philosophy

proposal 5

 

Draft 2

Draft 1

 

12

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