The Architecture, Culture & Tectonics Research Group warmly invites you
to attend their Seminar on Tuesday 2 August, B38 Lenton Firs at 13pm

“Cultural Landscapes and Urbanism in Kyoto”

Guest speaker: Kiyoko Kanki 

Abstract:

Kyoto is the historic city, which used to be the capital city between 794 and 1867, and only several temples and shrines are designated as World Heritage. There continued the citizen’s and the city’s efforts to keep the landscape, specially conserving the traditional town house architectures and recently the building height control and the visual colour control strengthened. Namely, the landscape conservation of Kyoto city area is not based on the integrated evaluation of the whole city area. We need to have wider recognition and evaluation on what is really the authenticity. The traditional town houses are still disappearing and the traditional industries are transforming. What is the most sustainable and authenticity to be found as urbanism in Kyoto? Here we can examine two communities in Kyoto, Nishijin and Katsurazaka. Nishijin is located in the center and famous by the traditional Nishijin textile industry. Katsurazaka is located in the outskirts and the newest (and perhaps the last) planned housing area. Among them, we can find the common characters, namely, the (former) elementary school as the community identity, and the autonomy like an independent government. The community manages lots of community services and contributions to public traditions, socially, religiously, physically. If we focus on the community is the most basic authenticity, Kyoto city can be recognized as something like United community of Kyoto. With this wider view, we can find the cultural landscapes for each community as the layered historic, modern, and contemporary features. And the cultural landscapes can be explained with many manifestation of community.

Biography:

Kiyoko KANKI, born in 1966 in Osaka, is a professor at the Department of Architecture and Architectural Engineering, Kyoto University. She graduated from master course of Graduate School of Architecture and Architectural Engineering, Kyoto University and received Dr.Eng from Kyoto University, in 1997. Her research interests include rural and urban planning focusing on local initiative and cultural landscape, dynamic authenticity of landscape to planning for dynamism, and evaluation-oriented planning. She has received several awards such as the ARP Prize 2015 (Kiyoko KANKI, Laretna T. Adishakti, Titin Fatimah: The series of activities about the evaluation and conservation of cultural landscape by international Borobudur field school). She also works with Katurazaka community council for Landscape (Katsurazaka Keikan Machidukuri Kyogikai) and plans for the landscape conservation in Katsurazaka officialised by the city.