This paper represents a case study of humanitarian architecture done by Shigeru Ban after Onagawa in Miyagi prefecture, Japan was hit by an earthquake and a tsunami. Onagawa is a small town in Miyagi prefecture in Japan. Its population is 6660 (around 3148 households) and has an area of 65.80 square kilometers. Onagawa’s economy is mainly based on commercial fishing. The town, in fact, processes and distributes different types of sea foods such as Coho salmon, pacific saury, and it is also known for the cultivation of oysters. The fish industry, however started to decline in 1970s, therefore a nuclear power plant was built in the area to enhance the economy. Ishinomaki city, a city next to Onagawa, merged with six surrounding towns, till it became the second largest city in Miyagi prefecture. Joining Ishonomaki city, however, was not something Onagawa agreed to do, they decided to remain independent. Thus, Onagawa became an enclave in Ishonomaki city (Map 1). Onagawa, faced problems such as the decline of its population. In 1980, the population of Onagawa was about 16000, which declined to 10000 in 2010, and the ratio of elderly people (over 65) was 33.8% in 2010 (Japan Times).
Onagawa was severely damaged due to the 2011 Earthquake. Since the town hall was extremely damaged by the tsunami, the Onagawa government was not able to act quickly after the disaster. Therefore, quick actions were taken by private sectors such as the Reconstruction Coordination Association (FRK) that was launched in April 19, to advise the government on how to progress with the reconstruction of Onagawa town. In September 2011, Onagawa (private sector) agreed on a reconstruction plan (Map 2). The town was zoned into several districts, as seen in the map, by the seashore obviously, commercial zone was located, and on the hill residential zone was placed.
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After the disaster, no clear decisions were made towards the financial right of those who lost their homes. The government was unable to reach an agreement with bank who insisted that payments would still be due on outstanding mortgages, even if the property in question had been destroyed. On the other hand, private disaster insurance covered 15% of homeowners in Onagawa. A year later, thry came to an agreement that residents will receive 12%-15% of the value of their homes. In addition to this amount, a one-off payment for the required purchase of their land. In Onagawa, these combined payments would amount to an average of eight million yen per household (around 72,000$). A new building, however, costs 20 million yen (around 182,000$). As noticed, the victims could not build privately, thus they have to rely on the public housing that Onagawa Reconstruction Design Committee (ORDC) have proposed in their reconstruction plans. Those, on the other hand, who had means to rebuild did not have access to land on which to do so.
The Onagawa municipal government demanded the support of several figures such a Shigeru Ban to design the station and a shopping area. Housing projects were implemented, one of which is Shigeru Ban’s container housing. Shigeru Ban is a Japanese architect, known for emergency architecture, and known for his innovative paper work, specifically recycled paper cardboard tubes, that can be used quickly and efficiently for house disaster victims. Shigeru Ban chose the Temporary Container Housing as a demonstration of the ethos of his work in the post-disaster field because as he said, the project highlights the importance of good design for temporary housing to avoid having a terrible evacuee situation for too long. This paper is going to tackle the design strategy of the container housing and its impact on the residents.
First Body: Crisis
According to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), on March 11,2011, Japan was hit by a 9M earthquake “The 2011 off the Pacific Coast of Tohoku Earthquake” that had several aftershocks. It was named as the biggest recorded earthquake in Japan leaving more than 20,000 people dead or missing. The largest aftershock occurred on the same day, and aftershocks still occurred between march and June. Precisely, 82 aftershocks that were M6 or higher and 506 aftershocks that were M5 or higher. “The 2011 off the Pacific Coast of Tohoku Earthquake” destroyed 3800 out of 4500 houses in Onagawa and that is more than 80% of Onagawa’s houses. Based on a summary given by Japan Weather Association (2011) and Disaster Countermeasures Office, 1504 people were dead or missing (Table 1). Precisely, the disaster claimed 822 lives, destroyed Onagawa station and its railway track. Six reinforced concrete buildings were overturned due to the tsunami that reached 15 m in height, and 1 km inland, according to an article posted by Japan Times. Within the affected area were the three nuclear power plants: The Fukushima Daiichi, Daini nuclear plant, and Onagawa nuclear power station operated by the Tohoku Electric Company. Onagawa’s power plant performance was evaluated by The International Atomic Energy Agency mission. They mentioned that: “the plant experienced very high levels of ground motion-the strongest shaking that any nuclear plant has ever experienced from an earthquake “, but it “shut down safely and was remarkably undamaged” (IAEA). Knowing that Onagawa was 60 km closer to the earthquake’s epicenter (123 km away from epicenter) (Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists) (Map 3).
The reconstruction actions done by the private sector business leaders, was faster than many larger towns impacted by the 2011 earthquake (Image 1). In fact, shortly after the disaster privately owned construction machinery were used to clear roads, the fish market reopened on April 1, reconstruction advisory board was formed, and local residents established small scale grocery stores and retail food facilities. On March 21, 2015, three years after the crisis, the Onagawa station was reconstructed and reopened. The station consisted of a community center and bathing facility in the upper floors. The station was also designed by Shigeru Ban. In December 2015, a pedestrianized shopping promenade, Seapal Pia was opened. Moreover, five years after the crisis, Onagawa residents still lived in short-term temporary accommodation. New residential housing was located at higher elevations on nearby hillsides.
Onagawa gained funding support from several sectors. They benefited from central government funding and funding from private individuals. In addition, they profited from foundations, such as Qatar friendship fund who provided 24 million dollars for the design and construction of new fish processing storage facility. Besides the support from Qatar fund, Shigeru Ban and Voluntary Architects Network (VAN) rebuilt the Onagawa Station building, and provided designs for temporary housing shelters (Image 2), the case study that will be discussed in this paper.
Second Body: Case Study
After the crisis, Onagawa demanded the largest number of housing units in a shorter period of time. Shigeru Ban responded to these demands by designing Container temporary housing. Shigeru Ban and a group of voluntary team, volunteered in the construction and design of temporary housing. Ban designed the housing complex for the survivors who had been displaced from their homes. The sire area is 12320 sqm and the total floor area is 5671 sqm. The structural work was held by the Japanese company Arup Japan. The mechanical engineering and general contracting was held by TSP TANYO, INC. Obviously, Shigeru Ban chose local members and companies to help in the project. Ban follows a certain strategy in his work: he engages local partners (architects and engineers) to perform a role in decision making and management process. He believes that community participation provides solutions to local needs and meet the local living standard. “I think it’s easier to send a doctor over there to help the people, but in architecture there is no universal solution, you must have the local people working, local architects.” (Ban, 2014). Ban also needs to ensure the ease of assembly by hiring as many local volunteers, students and residents. He also believes that the people should see a beautiful end result after their mental damage and the crisis. Ban created 189 residential that are constituted of two and three story buildings built from shipping containers. The reason why Ban used shipping containers in the design will be justified shortly. The housing complex consists of a market; a tent in the center of the complex, a café and 9 three-story container houses. (Image 3)
One difficulty faced in the area, is the insufficient amount of flat lands. Therefore, there was a difficulty in constructing enough temporary housing. Facing this difficulty, Shigeru Ban decided to stack the containers up to three floors. The containers were stacked in a checkerboard pattern (Image 4) to create bright open spaces in between the containers that serve as communal spaces for the residents; which is one reason why Ban designed using containers. Another reason, is that these containers can be placed on unleveled terrain and narrow sites, knowing that the area has limited amount of flat lands as mentioned earlier.
The project’s objective was actually to use existing containers to shorten the construction period, which also justifies the choice of containers. Moreover, wide interval can provide parking area, community facility and privacy of families. The containers, to illustrate, have excellent seismic performance, and can be used as a permanent apartment. Thus a prototype of container was used, with three different plan sizes (Image 5). The first is a 19.8 square meter apartment for one or two residents. The second prototype is 29.7 square meter apartment for three to four residents. Finally, the third is a 39.6 square meter apartment for more than four residents.
Shigeru Ban and the team, also thought of storage for the residents. They provided built-in furniture for storage. The reason behind this, is that the temporary housing made by the government lack enough storage. Therefore, in coordination with Voluntary Architects Network (VAN), the team assembled shelves and installed them in each room (Image 6). The market, as mentioned before, was built in the center of the site, can be seen in image 3. It was used for locals to open their shops. This helped them in the economy too. Shigeru Ban built the market using a tent, to create space in the market where people get together and socialize. In addition, a Café was implemented (Image 7).
The project was funded by many sectors government and private sector. The donors are, Niebaum-Coppola Estate Winery, Honk Kong Ambassadors of Design Limited, Hiroshi Senjyu Suruga Bank, Japan Eri Logona Japan Inc., Grace Farms Foundation Inc., Perolini Baumanagement AG, Parfums Givenchy, Jeff Spiritos and Klemens Gasser, S-G investment, Yoshihisa Ejiri, Lo Chung Wing Victor, Nami Ogata and a number of private donors. Moreover, the interior table were donated by moreTrees and Louis Vuitton Forest. The interior curtains and lighting were donated by Ryohin Keikaku. Ryuichi Sakamoto donated the marker, and painter Hiroshi Senju donated the art workshop. The project cost 465,000$ (Charlesworth, 2014).
Conclusion: Impact
According to Masunori Kusaka and the Reconstruction Support Centre, the 189 families who lived in this complex now enjoy a very high standard of living and barely report any problems unlike other evacuees in the disaster zone. “Every shelter must be dependent on the country” said Ban in an interview with Charlesworth, 2014. He compared when he was working in Italy to his work in Japan. He described the situation in Japan as terrible and lacking privacy, since people has to wait six months until temporary housing was ready. “So I designed a partition system to give people privacy. It was very successful”. He said. He also describes the temporary housing provided by the government as “too poor”. Shigeru Ban was very thoughtful through the design process. As discussed earlier, he used shipping containers for several reasons and the main one is that he had to design a complex that could accommodate the most number of victims in a short period of time. He succeeded by creating a housing project made of 189 residential units of different capacities in 14 weeks. The project still stands now and people are still living there as permanent living space. “… temporary housing is hard and has to be beautiful; and you have to know how to deal with the local architects and local engineers…”. The fact that he used pre-used containers is environmentally friendly. Not only its environmentally friendly, but his decisions were economical. Moreover, the complex had a positive impact on the users’ social life. As mentioned before, the housing consists of market, café, and children classes spaces. This design gesture, enhances the communication and the social life of the victims, who will bond and forget about the crisis that hit the area and left them homeless. Ban was thoughtful of the residents in the area. As mentioned before, he engages local volunteers and companies in the project to meet the local needs of the area, since obviously, locals know the area more.
Housing is a major rescue project that shelters the victims in crisis, whether natural or political. Efficient and well-designed housing, however need to be provided. As mentioned in the essay, for example, the housing developed by the government which lacked storage, whereas Shigeru Ban and the voluntary team meticulously thought of providing storage for residents, and creating communal spaces. Well-designed housing creates a feeling of safety for the victims and residents. The housing project still stands now and used as permanent living complex.