Toyo Ito helps displaced feel at home
With Toyo Ito winning this year's Pritzker Prize last month — "architecture's Nobel" — Japan's architects continue to bestride the international architectural world as colossi. You might expect that such celebrated figures would find major roles to play in the post-disaster reconstruction of the tsunami-ravaged Tohoku region, but you would be disappointed.
However, with characteristic modesty and acuity, Ito has been advancing a small, potent project called Minna-no-ie (Homes-for-all) in the disaster areas. The project brings design architects together with the displaced residents of temporary housing facilities to develop small shared spaces, from which a new sense of community can be nurtured. Part public space, part domestic hearth, six Homes-for-all have been completed; more are under way. Toyo Ito will receive the Pritzker prize at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston on May 29.