Takenoko

Having lived in “Oku no Hosomichi,” a share house in Hongo, I've seen many projects emerge from casual conversation in the living room. That experience convinced me that “conversation” born from a place you can hang out in without any particular reason — “daberi” — is an essential kind of time for people. But in recent years, redevelopment in central Tokyo has been converting sento (public baths), cafeterias, and boarding houses with communal baths — all of which once functioned as a town's daberi space — into family-oriented apartment buildings. Takenoko is building a model, starting in Hongo, that uses vacant houses to create share houses and coworking spaces for students, so that students living within that network can work together with local residents to protect and grow the town's daberi space. We'd like to expand this beyond Hongo to other campus areas, and eventually to parts of Asia where large-scale redevelopment continues to erode local community.