Yokohama Masterplan

From the outside, the Japanese city seems a mere coexistence of random architectures in a field of maximum freedom. There is no planning, no public realm. But Yokohama deviates from the Japanese norm; through its commitment to urban design it could become a laboratory for defining a "Japanese" public realm. The point of departure for the project was the unique conditions we found on the site: two markets with a colossal number of parking places; the arrival on the site of railroads, cars (via the new highway) and ships, and the proximity of the imminent massive development of Minato Mirai 21 – a tremendous injection of density in an already congested urban condition.