The Japan Study Programme is a design research platform connecting workshops across distinct geographical and cultural contexts: a rural post-agricultural village, an inner-city neighbourhood in Tokyo and a woodland fabrication workshop. Across these contexts, creative design emerges through cyclical relationships between objects, local knowledge, skills and stories, guided by direct observation and community engagement as an economy of means. The programme encourages active observation and individual creative responses to the social and cultural landscapes of Japan. The interlinking nature of these workshops allows new knowledge to emerge through encounters between contrasting conditions, bringing together notions of the global and the local – GLOCAL. 

This workshop explores the relationship between forestry, craft and settlement through field research and collective making. Working between urban and rural contexts, participants will engage with the material and cultural practices of Hida-Furukawa, where broadleaf forestry and furniture-making persist as locally rooted economies shaped by seasonal rhythms and tradition, yet are increasingly affected by urbanisation and tourism.

The programme brings together students, architects and local makers to collaboratively investigate practices of building, dwelling and resource use. Through hands-on work and observation, it considers how cultural memory and ecological thinking inform ways of living and making under changing environmental and social conditions.

In association with Maeda Corporation as a core design research partner, the programme works with a range of cultural and civic institutions.