Yasuaki Onoda, a professor at Tohoku University in Japan, was in Paris when the powerful earthquake and tsunami struck the east cost of Japan in March of last year, killing over 15,000 and causing horrifying devastation.
Watching the terrible scenes on television, he was shocked and flew home immediately. He arrived at his damaged house three days later.
Onoda remembers the next scene with a slightly humorous tone. “I opened the door to say ‘Are you okay?’ to my family. They were just eating their lunch. They said ‘Oh, you’ … [You have] just come back. It’s too late,” he said, chuckling.
Despite being relieved that his family was alright and his house had escaped severe damage, he was still upset that he wasn’t with them when the disaster occurred. He spent the next days working with his wife and son to manage their everyday life without water and electricity.
It became apparent that Onoda, who is also an architect and an architecture programmer, had plenty in store for him in terms of helping others that were affected by the incident, even though he wasn’t with his own family in the very first days of the crisis.
He helped found Archi Aid, a network of architects and university architecture faculty members who wanted to help rebuild areas stricken by the disaster. Architecture students became an important part of the plan, engaging with residents who had lost homes or their entire towns, and developing models and plans to restructure the regions.
“We decided we needed a kind of platform to join talented human resources for reconstruction. That is Archi Aid … an open platform for various activities for human relief and recovery for architects and to connect people,” Onoda said.
One example of Archi Aid’s program is their “Summer Camp”, in which groups of students from various architecture schools in the country stayed for a few days in the small port settlements in Tohoku’s Oshika peninsula, which is administered by the city of Ishinomaki.
Summer Camp became feasible after Onoda managed to convince the city of Ishinomaki to enter into comprehensive cooperation with his university, granting official capacities to those involved in the camp to engage with locals.
The students did fieldwork such as interviewing residents and creating master plans for rebuilding dozens of settlements that were swept away by the tsunami. They then presented their plans to locals and, after collecting and collating the work done by separate groups, presented those plans to Ishinomaki for possible incorporation into their official reconstruction plan.
While the residents needed partners who would show them future possibilities, the students were provided with good material to help them understand the power of nature and design through small villages. In total, 15 universities and colleges and 111 architects and students were involved in the Summer Camp.
According to Onoda, one important role of Archi Aid is to bridge local officials and architects, creating a relationship that, if not done in a certain manner, might fail to establish itself properly,
“Architects are very important for reconstruction projects … [but] the local government and the people don’t want to collaborate with architects so much … because of the difficulties of the reconstruction process itself. As you know, reconstruction is very complicated so one of the reasons could come from the complication of stakeholders. Too many [stakeholders],” he said recently in a discussion in Jakarta.
Discussing with architects about redevelopment plans will likely take more time than discussing those plans with engineers, and, according to Onoda in his interview with The Japan Times last year, architects take things further than merely considering physical structures such as bridges and seawalls.
“We are adding another dimension to those aspects – one that really takes into consideration the lifestyles and hopes of locals,” Onoda was quoted as saying.
But the strained relationship might partly be due to the nature of the profession of architecture itself.
“Architects are independent professionals. [It is a] very proud profession … creative, critical,” Onoda said, smiling. For the government, it might be difficult to have architects follow their will at all.
He himself experienced the profession’s perks before the tsunami. A PhD graduate from Tohoku University, he has received several awards, including two prizes from the Architectural Institution of Japan (AIJ) and first prize in the
Ina Higashi Elementary School Design Competition.
“Before the earthquake I truly enjoyed my profession with talented architects,” he said, referring to the projects he did as an architect as well as an architectural programmer, which he likened to being a writer or producer in film.
Onoda’s works include the Sendai Theater Factory 10-Box with Naoto Yaegashi and the Tohoku University Centennial Hall with noted fellow architect Hitoshi Abe.
His work as an architecture programmer includes the Sendai Mediatheque, which features architect Toyo Ito, and the Yokosuka Art Museum, featuring architect Riken Yamamoto.
Onoda described the architects in Japan as living and working in a “safety zone” before the disaster struck. They might have worked according to high earthquake-proof standards, but the tsunami was something unexpected.
“Before March 11, architects enjoyed their lives on their own assumption, like me, but we awakened from our one sided-assumption that safety would be eternal,” he said.
The disaster led to radical change. His own office, the Department of Architecture, had heavy damage.
The irony prompted the university president to ask during a visit why that precise section was the one worst hit. “It was a simple question but very weighty,” Onoda said.
He had to change his way of working as a straightforward architect into a planner concentrating on rebuilding post-disaster areas. This was something new to him, and the new challenges included coordinating various parties involved — including the displaced residents — and convincing residents that the projects will be beneficial to them. Moreover, there is limited time and human resources.
“I try to do my best. And I am gathering information … I believe the decision should be good for the future. But, on the other hand, the situation is very, very complicated,” Onoda said.
Nevertheless, Onoda and his team are working for the future. “I am proud of the spiritual virtue of Japanese people. They help each other. It is very useful and effective in an emergency phase. Now, facing a different phase, we have to be organized,” he said.
