In 2017 we discovered an abandoned temple halfway between Mt. Madarao and Mt. Myoko, in the village of Shinanomachi, Nagano. The sheer physical and cultural stature of the building captivated us so we decided to pursue the building by talking to local council and neighbours. The council had slated the temple for demolition. Finally after two years of pursuit, a local real estate agent herd of our interested and for better or worse became involved. At this point we invited designer research professor, DR. Guy Keulemans and design partner Kyoko Hashimoto from UNSW to conduct a study and methodical project regarding the temple.

Guy and Kyo have particular interests and research experience in traditional Japanese culture in relevance to contemporary socio-environmental ecologies, and the relationships between aesthetics, ethics and sustainability in product design.

Below is an exert his article, Design considerations for the transformative reuse of a Japanese temple (Keulemans et al., 2020) accepted for publication in the upcoming proceedings of the Design Research Society Conference 2020: Synergy in August 2020. 

Early in 2019 I was contacted by friend and colleague, Japan-based Aussie designer Liam Mugavin, with some interesting news: he had discovered an abandoned Buddhist temple in the Shinano region of Nagano, and the local council had flagged it for demolition for health and safety reasons.

This presents a great number of interesting issues from a research perspective. There is no doubt its representative of a larger problem in Japan. Increasing secularism and movement into cities has led to a large number of empty temples. More broadly, construction and demolition waste is a problem for Japan as much as it is a problem for the rest of the world. Globally, demolition and construction waste accounts for around half of the solid waste generated each year and is one of largest single components of landfill, forecast to double by 2025.

Increased secularism is a global phenomena also, and while its seems that religious buildings are typical conserved, I’m not sure that’s actually true. More pertinently, if religious buildings are not conserved, what happens to them?

An architectural adaptive reuse of this kind would be an exciting development for Anyoji, the temple in Shinano, Nagano. The building, absent a monk to maintain it, has suffered though years of snow and storm damage.

But if an architectural solution, for reasons of cost or practicality, is not possible, what options remain is an intriguing question. What can happen to the temple materials, and how can a transformative reuse be cultural sensitive, locally relevant, but globally significant? The temple itself is said to be more than 300 years old, locally valued and in possession of amazingly thick timber post and beams, amongst other materials, far too good and useful to end up in landfill (Suzuki, 2019).

During my visit to the temple in May, and prepared with a UNSW ethics approval for human research, my translator Kyoko Hashimoto and I began the task of interviewing local residents to find out more on the temple’s history. At the same time, I documented the temple in video and photography, in order to later build a photogrammetry model that both captures the state of the temple prior to its demolition and catalogs the super-abundance of interesting materials, furnishings, components and junk inside the temple: objects of sacred and non-sacred importance, items of ritual, prayer and craft.

The temple’s interior objects appear largely untouched since the temple ceased operations, with a few key exceptions, including the relocation of a significant buddha statue and some other items to nearby temples, plus a theft of some other semi-significant items (Fujiki, 2019). Some areas of the temple exposed to the elements, such as the floor under the fallen roof section, are badly damaged. Other areas are well intact, albeit dusty.  In consideration of my research area of transformative repair and reuse, I asked what the local residents thought might be appropriate solutions for the temple’s materials, should the temple be demolished or dismantled. I was told that reuse would be appreciated (Watanabe, 2019), especially if the reuse maintained a link to the temple (Fujiki, 2019), and the quality of the temple materials was considered (Suzuki, 2019).

It should also be noted that the temple has been legally deconsecrated and has no heritage restrictions (Watanabe, 2019). The religion scholar Katja Triplett notes that redundant Buddhist objects of special significance are typically burnt  – a tradition noted in one of our interviews (Fujiki, 2019) ) – but there is also a history of transformation practices for Buddhist objects that may categorise and substantiate the transformative reuse of the Anyoji Temple within a theological framework, termed “benevolent iconoclasm” (Triplett, 2017).

My feeling from the confluence of community consultation and theological considerations was that a transformative reuse proposal warranted further exploration. Given the distance of the temple from my workplace, it is the role of digital tools in this transformative reuse I am most keen to investigate. This is on the premise that digital objects can be transported and manipulated using information technologies, without the need for costly and environmentally damaging shipping of real world materials.

The potential for scanning and visualisation technologies to aid cultures of repair and reuse are obvious. Materials and component can be captured and transformed virtually with less effort and energy, computed aided transformations can feed into robotic fabrication workflows, just as they have for linear production modes, and virtual repairs and reuse could be undertaken remotely, by international designers without need to transport actual materials at carbon cost. Indeed, the potential for emerging technologies to invigorate circular economies for repair and reuse, just as they have for linear economy production, is massively under-researched.

The use of such technologies in a trans-national, cross-cultural capacity is likewise important, equally or more so under-researched, and intrinsically complementary.

References:

Keulemans G; Harle J; Hashimoto K; Mugavin L, 2020, ‘Design considerations for the transformative reuse of a Japanese temple’, in Design Research Society 2020 International Conference, Griffith University, presented at Guy Keulemans, Griffith University, 11 August 2020 – 14 August 2020, http://drs2020.org/

Fujiki, (2019). Interview with Fujiki-san, a relative of the Anyoji’s last monk. Conducted 23rd May, 2019 in Myoko, Niigata, Japan.

Suzuki, (2019). Interview with Suzuki-san, neighbour of the Anyoji temple. Conducted 24th May, 2019 in Shinano, Niigata, Japan.

Triplett, K (2017). “The Making and Unmaking of Religious Objects: Sacred Waste Management in Comparative Perspective” In Université de Tenri., Morishita, S. S., & Marburger Universitätsbund (R.F.A.). (2017). Materiality in religion and culture. Münster: Lit.

Watanabe, (2019). Interview with Tetsuya Watanabe-san, local curator and archaeologist Nojiriko Naumann Elephant Museum. Conducted 22nd May in Shinano, Niigata, Japan.

All interviews were conducted in accordance with UNSW ethics approval HC190299. My team and I would like to acknowledge the local residents of Shinano in Nagano, Japan and thank them for their time, hospitality and contribution to our research.