“Agricultural City” by Kisho Kurokawa (1960)

Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa survived the Ise Bay Typhoon in 1959 and his experience inspired the design for an “Agricultural City” (1960).

This megastructure project consists in a grid-like structure of concrete slabs raised on 4 m stilts on the agricultural soil and is meant to synchronize the rural landscape with the living areas and to prevent the habitat to be flooded. The grid hosts roads, water-services, electricity, monorails and other facilities like schools and administration buildings.

Housing punctuates the slabs in the form of “mushrooms shaped houses“, one to three floors structures with a wooden frame aluminium cap meant to overcome the concepts of walls and roof and opened to the sky through a skylight. The single frame of the grid is 500x500m and it consists of twentyfive 100m x 100m blocks for 200 people, the basic unit of the agricultural community.

 

The design concept is explained by the architect:

Natural growth of the agricultural city is provided by a grid system of streets containing the utility pipes underneath.While each of the square units composed of several households is autonomous, linking these units together creates a village. The living units multiply spontaneously without any hierarchy, gradually bringing the village into being as the traditional rural settlement has developed throughout Japanese history.

 

 

 

 

 

Mushrooms shaped houses

 

 

 

 

 

 

Via: Antonio Di Campli (The Metabolist City) and Metalocus