The European Prize for Architecture Awards Tell a friend

Photographs: Nikta Wu

Project Description

A permanent park for post industrial meditation in Kuramata Village, Japan Potemkin stands as a post industrial temple, the Acropolis to re-think of the connection between the modern man and nature.The park is founded on an illegal garbage dump. 

This cultivated junk yard is a mixture of temple and machine. The big industrial park includes indoor and outdoor spaces constructed out of 1-inch thick Kawasaki steel plates, 130-m long, 12-m wide, 5-m high. Other materials used: white gravel, Kama River bottom stones, crushed concrete, crushed glass, wood, volcanic saand, concrete, asphalt.

The architecture was drawn on site in 1:1 scale on snow by walking the lines with snow-shoes and then built up when the snow melted.The rice farming village of Kuramata is dying. 

The younger generations have moved to Nijgata, Tokyo and other cities and the traditions of hundreds of years are about to disappear very rapidly; traditions that are based on a harmonious co-existence between the man and nature – human nature as part of nature. 

Potemkin celebrates Local Knowledge and by providing an industrial ruin it is providing hope.