Guides to Tokyo

Fall 2016. UCLA Architecture and Urban Planning

ARCH UD 289.2 / URBN PLN 298

Urban Humanities: Guides to Tokyo

University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA)

* Interdisciplinary Graduate Course

* 2 Units

* Co-taught with Dana Cuff & Maite Zubiaurre

Course Description

The fall term’s 2-unit seminar is intended to introduce Tokyo as a spatial, historical, cultural, architectural, and political site of urban transformation. Entitled “Guides to Tokyo,” the seminar takes ways to explore the city as its starting point, looking at fiction, film, history, and urban studies as different types of metaphorical guides. This distant city will be presented and represented through literature, scholarly readings, and films. Tokyo’s complex history can be read through myriad lenses, including narratives of crisis and disaster, mobility and congestion, nature and culture, aesthetics and demolition. Our focus will eventually turn toward the implications for Tokyo of the 1964 and 2020 Olympics. As the quarter progresses, we will render our growing understandings of Tokyo through thick mapping projects, culminating in a workshop at the end of the term.