This paper aimed to clarify the relationships between children’s aspects of playing and spatial characteristics of playing zones. For this purpose, observational investigation was executed at three after-school care facilities which have different spatial characteristics such as area size, condition of playing zone and so on. In the analysis, the attention was paid to “place factors: area size of zones, the zones’ spatial characteristics, and fixedness of children’s playing place”, “playing factors: kind of playing and fixedness of it”, and “playmate factors: group of playmate, size of the group.” And we analyzed the relationship between children’s aspects of playing and the zones’ spatial characteristics through breaking the children’s aspects of playing down into patterns. Consequently, it was understood that the concrete consideration points as follows set off children’s stable staying and developmental playing; the enclosed zones, furniture as play base, the zone that synchronizes with the kind of playing, and plurals zones with various floor surfacing that make children to be able to select the playing place according to their playing kind.

View full abstract

This study aims to clarify human behavior in front of lounge in a concourse of the monorail stations and shops of the railway stations in Kansai area. The data collected from the investigation conducted in 2008 are analyzed from the point of view of human characteristics with space syntax theory. Characteristics of human behavior in front of lounges in a concourse at the monorail stations and shops in the normal railway stations are analyzed. Left-hand and right-hand circular direction on the way to ticket wicket were also found. Finally, technical proposal on planning facilities located in concourse are discussed.

View full abstract

Meguro Chuo junior high school has been built with innovative planning as a junior high school on departmentalized classroom system planned to narrow-minded site in city part where a lot of limiting conditions exist: all-seated home base, installing whiteboard and ICT equipment to all classes. Since its completion, POE surveys have been conducted in order to study the differences between designers’ intensions and school-users opinions and the way the school is actually being used. As a result, further useful knowledge for planning about junior high schools on departmentalized classroom system has been acquired.

View full abstract

The Hokkaido brown bear house in Sapporo Maruyama Zoo was designed with the concept of “environmental enrichment”. To consider the environmental elements which enrich bear’s behavior ‘Evaluation grid method’ was used to draw wide range of ideas from zoo keepers. In the outside exhibition area all ground is covered by soil and there are a hill, a pond, caves, many natural plants and dead trees for bear’s play. In the two observation spaces visitors can see the bear at close range and hear and smell of the bear through the pipes fixed in the wall. Many characteristic behaviors of the bear and visitors were observed including their communication through the window with a large and thick acrylic resin.

View full abstract

In case of relatively large-scale manufacturing plants we propose basic and practical planning method of site master plans, plans of factories, administrative offices, utility facilities, and connecting measures in view point of future expansion plan, cost effective circulation, corporate identity, and utility supply system. Also based on two fundamental process flows most useful design method is provided considering future expansion plan of a manufacturing building with simple and repeatable configuration of receiving and shipping area, process flow, and their connecting transportation system.

View full abstract

This study aims to analyze public-private sense of residential environment on care facility for the elderly by action research on the design project in Welimada village, Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka, which purpose is international cooperation and technology transfer for developing countries. Through the field survey about existent facilities in Colombo and neighbor’s houses in Welimada, it was cleared that sharing a room is not entirely negative in Sri Lanka. And also, conducting the furniture layout experiment, the following were found; 1) People in Sri Lanka tend to import beds densely in the situation of sharing a room. 2) Physical divide between each beds is not necessarily distinct. 3) common place in a room is secured positively.

View full abstract

On our site, I investigated wooden roof truss of Tokyo station that were built at war damage reconstruction. It became clear that the wooden roof truss is ‘Modern wood truss’ studied and developed in 1930-1945 age before and during World War II. In this paper, the form materials and the joining method of the wooden roof truss are made clear. In addition, it was clear about engineer who was concerned the wooden roof truss construction of Tokyo station.

View full abstract

The Catch Blocks are placed on the sidewalk in order to inform the visually disabled circumstance or to guide them to the nearby buildings. The Catch Blocks might be barriers for not only non-users but also users, because of the unevenness on the surface of tactile warning blocks which compose the Catch Blocks. In this study, the authors used “Flat Escorting Line; FEL” which has flat surface and can inform the visually disabled circumstance with tactile information and sound from elasticity material, and inspected validity of using FEL as the Catch Block with walking experiment, comparing FEL with the tactile warning blocks.

View full abstract

The following paper deals with the method of approach for creating communal spaces in kiki. This is aimed to build common sense of communal spaces and create it voluntary.
The overall workflow:
1) Evaluate communal spaces with expanding relations by dialogue and workshop.
2) Make communication tool and constructing common sense with it.
3) Maintain and design communal spaces by themselves.

View full abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine and clarify the procedures of what and the utilization of land by undertaking three case studies which are related to the contaminated farmland in Taiwan. These three cases were made by interviewing the local government and visiting the farmland site. The result of these investigation showed that there is no specific regulation for the farmland contamination in Taiwan. Furthermore, the most popular treatment for polluted farmlands is dilution. Dilution can only temporarily relieve the contamination instead of cleaning it up. Although some amendments were made in February 2010 by the government, issues about the treatment of farmland contamination were still there. For example, farms may still be in fallow even they had been released from the contamination site.

View full abstract

The population of about 2/3 lives in DID now. It is a situation in which the wisdom and the knowledge of villages are not succeeded easily. A lot of environmental studies in villages are practiced. However, they target a part of a village. I paid attention the concept of “Mura, Nora, Yama” to understand a village overall. I practiced environmental study where three maps, Mura-map, Nora-map, Yama-map, were made. This paper is intended to report the method and its results. Results show that this method is actually useful to understand a village overall.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study is to clarify the factors that impact variety and quantity of vacant house information released on the official website of local governments. Statistical classification of such information and an analysis of relationship between the patters of the information publicity and the project method were performed. The results are as follows; 1) Patterns can be classified into four groups based on the amount of basic comprehensive information, and quality of detailed information. 2) Interrelations between the project method and publicity patterns are found. If there is a cooperation with real estate agents, the information released tends to be more enhanced in terms of both variety and quantity.

View full abstract

Having some similarities as tsunami-prone areas, Sanriku Coastal Area, Japan, and Hilo, Hawaii, experienced several devastating tsunamis and recovered in their history. However, the post-tsunami urban recovery planning and the future strategy for tsunami management present differences in both areas. Demonstrating timeline of the affected tsunamis and the published planning and policies for tsunami disaster management, this paper compares the history of urban recovery planning and designing for tsunami hazard in the United States and Japan. It also examines the contents for urban safety management in recent governments’ guidelines to share useful information for the future planning strategy.

View full abstract

This study is about a trial of succeeding a historical context to the redeveloped area in Shiodome, the center of Tokyo. Public-Private Partnership has been maintained by area-management. Divided sites with constructed infrastructure have rooted in common historical context, such as daimyo residences and the first train station of Japan. Urban design in Shiodome has had a role of designing the historical meaning in actual space and realizing to visualize the meaning with many kinds of resource, from old bricks of Meiji period to documents of excavation. Historical succession has been realized in Shiodome by local community of land owners that recognised the importance of design activities of area-management and pursued their own design in public space. This study suggests that urban design has a possibility of succeeding historical context to development under local community’s initiative.

View full abstract

The Landscape Act was enforced in 2005. As a result, local authorities are able to maintain more certainly of important structures of landscape. The purpose of this study is that to reveal the problem and actual condition for this new system. Through this study, we revealed that this system isn’t supported enough. Therefore, local authorities can’t designate aggressively structures of landscape importance. The point of improvements to this system, for example, is to improve special provisions of the Building Standards Law. Besides, it is necessary to ease the conditions for using of financial assistance and clarify tax benefits.

View full abstract

The purpose of this paper is to consider how to promote “service-learning” for community improvement in Japan with through the case analysis of the U.S. universities. So this study investigated 25 universities.
The conclusions are; 1) In the U.S., various universities have the programs of service-learning for community improvement. Community outreach organizations in university have partnerships with communities, which have the programs of service-learning on their partnerships. 2) To promote “service-learning” for community improvement in Japan, Japanese universities might have partnerships with communities, so can have the programs of service-learning for community improvement based on these partnerships.

View full abstract

With female students as a subject, this study aims to clarify the changes in consciousness and awareness about use of strollers among students before and after they use strollers on campus themselves. In the female students consciousness survey about the actual stroller users, much was said about the unpleasantness of using strollers on crowded trains and buses. But after the practical experiment survey, students acquired knowledge about using a stroller and also became more aware of the challenges of raising a child.

View full abstract

A lot of “Variable Infill”, such as movable partition walls and furniture, has been proposed as some of the main elements of “SI building”. However, those are not always used effectively because of difficulties in move, capacities in storage, aesthetics in design, etc. In this study, I proposed variably connectable and movable partition furniture that has round shape in both ends. First, the basic sequence patterns by connection of the furniture were discussed by the analogy of the ball chain. Then, the effectiveness of the proposed furniture was confirmed by trial manufacture.

View full abstract

Fall of exterior partial wall, for instance, tile, mortar etc. from buildings is becoming a big social problem in Japan. Especially, slanting wall is dangerous because it usually faces public busy road. However, such slanting wall is easy to be deteriorated because it can be a weak point in the waterproof. In this study, I investigated into the actual condition of deterioration of exterior slanting walls of buildings in two districts and analyzed relationships between such deteriorations and some attributes of buildings.

View full abstract

1 The rubricated age of each person on “the name card” in this historical document is that as of the 6th year of Bunsei.
2 The situation of the incumbents of each position written in this historical document seems to be at around April in the 9th year of Bunsei.
3 This historical document was owned personally by the chief of the employed carpenters by the Kaga-Han, but its credibility is high.
4 This historical document shows that an employed carpenter by the Kaga-Han had taken a sick leave.

View full abstract

The first sheep barn with gambrel roof in Hokkaido was built around 1920 in Takikawa Sheep Farm by Department of Agriculture and Commerce. According to the plan by the government to increase the number of one million sheep, five Sheep Farms were established in Japan. In those sheep farms similar shape of sheep barns with gambrel roof were built from 1918 to 1924. However, all of them were demolished except in Takikawa and Tsukisamu. The books by Rokurou Iwanami, and Masayuki Okamoto described about the sheep barns with gambrel roof of Department Agriculture and Commerce.

View full abstract

In conservation and renovation of exterior materials in historical buildings, it developed that guideline of judgment process is necessary because a variety of judgments are asked, even if the policy of conservation was decided.
This report shows judgment process of conservation methods for exterior materials in historical RC buildings, through inspection and analysis of process in conservation and renovation, as case of main building of Yokohama Customhouse.

View full abstract

The authors tried new approach for creating continuous elevations of traditional wooden houses using 3D laser scanning. In this paper, the features of scanned point cloud data such as density, voids and irregularities are analyzed and the factors concerning them are made clear first. Second, the scanned results of latticework are described. And more, the summary about re-coloring test of point cloud data to improve poor looking of elevations by multiple exposures and how to create continuous elevations are mentioned. We concluded effectiveness of laser scanning and future tasks to create continuous elevations of wooden traditional buildings through them.

View full abstract

The outdoor use of digital tools such as AR is anticipated, but there is a problem that the content is hard to see when a normal PC display is used. In this study, to clarify the reason for this, luminance, the contrast ratio, and the viewing angle of a display designed for outdoor use were measured according to each step of 16 luminance settings in a darkroom and outdoors. Two methods of obtaining stable data of display luminance were considered, namely construction of a pilot machine which can make artificial lighting with stable environment and a computer simulation.

View full abstract

Computer vision is concerned with the theory and technology for robot’s eyes that obtain information from images.
Tracking is one of the indispensable requirements for computer vision system and is responsible for registering the virtual world in the real world.
The authors select a marker-based tracking method, which computes the location such as position and orientation of a square marker in physical space out of an image captured by a camera. In this paper, the authors would like to propose a photo-measurement tool with a digital camera.

View full abstract

Digital archive is not only for visual appreciation. We propose a method to generate vibration analysis models with a digital archive which is precisely made.
The digital archive we made consists of huge amount of elements. Each element holds several attributes which includes a three dimensional geometric shape, therefore it is possible to calculate the element’s volume by its shape data. You can also calculate a center of gravity’s coordinate value of the whole elements which belong to the domain you have set.
This paper reports that the authors attempted to generate vibration analysis models by the method above and succeeded to obtain reasonable results.

View full abstract

For the educational tool of built environment in schools, the learning tool using toy blocks controlled by personal computer was developed. Students/pupils programmed the control command of LEGO mindstorms NXT software to measure the temperature, sound level, and lighting level in the house they made using toy blocks LEGO. Moreover they programmed the control command to open/close the windows of the house corresponding to the measured temperature. As a result of questionnaire survey on this educational program, it was found that many students wanted the program for indoor air quality of the built environment.

View full abstract

Shonai Earthquake of 1894, one of the largest inland earthquakes occurred in flat plain in Japan, attacked Yamagata and Akita Prefectures and caused 726 deaths. The authors have continued literature survey on historical earthquakes in Akita Prefecture and in this paper the Shonai earthquake was investigated. At the first step, reconnaissance reports, local publications, local newspapers and local governmental documents at that time were collected and reviewed. Damage information by local governmental unit was listed in a table.

View full abstract

A lot of wooden house collapsed in the southern part of Hyogo Prefecture earthquake and earthquake countermeasures for wooden house are important problems. On the other hand, global warming is a serious problem and it is a pressing need to decrease the amount of the exhaust of carbon dioxide that is contributes to global warming most. We propose the index to evaluate earthquake countermeasures for wooden house from the viewpoint of carbon dioxide emissions.

View full abstract