Shelly Kappe introduces Itsuko Hasegawa, the recent winner of the Shonandai Culture Center competition, and the evening’s translator, George Kunihiro.

Hasegawa describes her winning entry in the Shonandai competition, which includes a theater and sports facilities in Fujisawa. She characterizes the project as inspired by traditional Japanese architecture and craftsmanship. She attempted to create a less prominent building by burying the main volume into the landscape.

Hasegawa discusses Tokyo as a Japanese city in which Eastern and Western influences are mixed. Hasegawa discusses Japan’s history of natural disasters, and describes Japanese traditional architecture as pieces of rubble fallen from these catastrophes. She goes on to address the trouble that Japanese and Asian cultures have had in adapting to Western design, and how this has generated conflict.

Hasegawa presents a selection of her early works that consist of small low cost residential projects for working class clients in Japan. Hasegawa address her inspiration from traditional Japanese countryside folk houses that have a very strong connection to nature through organic forms and solutions.