Hashima. The images of the disappearing city.
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M.Arch
July 2018
ABSTRACT
The city is a complex and heterogeneous unit. The relationship between a man and the past, present and future creates the identity of the city and its structure. When human community disappears, the city becomes a sign of human history, tradition. The city becomes a witness of its own disappearance.
The city is a complex and heterogeneous unit. The relationship between a man and the past, present and future creates the identity of the city and its structure. When human community disappears, the city becomes a sign of human history, tradition. The city becomes a witness of its own disappearance.
The project aims to create the infrastructure necessary to visit the Hashima City Museum.
A man wandering around the island is able to get familiar with the history of the place, observe its disappearance.
Selected fragments of the city are here called the Images. Man is guided from the Image to the Image, in-between which he has the chance to question the legitimacy of certain events.
These questions are here called the Filters.
The intersecting grid of the Images points and the Filters points determines the path.
Time provokes architecture to decay, disappear and thus the picture changes. The selection of images is subjective. It is the result of long time research. The choice of images does not limit the man in finding and building his own images of the place.
PROJECT COMPONENTS:
Hashima City Museum : The Harbor, The Pavilion, The Tower
The Images
The Filters
THE HARBOR AND THE PAVILION
THE TOWER
THE IMAGES
THE FILTERS
| Filter A | Chapel
1. Dotokou is a Japanese who returns to Hashima to visit his old home in which he grew up as a child. He walks and admires the remains of his school and the hotel where he lived just after arriving on the island. Eventually he goes to a family home where he finds old souvenirs like mother's tea mugs. For people like Dotokou, the island is a place that brings back memories, a place of reflection about the history and past.
In his ritual Dotokou comes back every year to lay flowers in memory of his family members.
2. In 1921, a two-storey building no. 23 was constructed. It was a wooden structure inhabited by teachers from a nearby school lived. It was also the only place where there was a city chapel with rooms for meditation. Currently, this object is in total ruin, but the sculpture from the Sempukuji temple has been preserved to this day. Moved to one of the filter rooms creates a new space for meditation that a man can visit and remember former residents.
Both facts were combined to create a new chapel in the form of a square-shaped building, consisting of a corridor space - a profane and a sacred for a proper chapel. Now here, the former residents can come back and pray for their families, lay flowers in the memory od the past. |
In his ritual Dotokou comes back every year to lay flowers in memory of his family members.
2. In 1921, a two-storey building no. 23 was constructed. It was a wooden structure inhabited by teachers from a nearby school lived. It was also the only place where there was a city chapel with rooms for meditation. Currently, this object is in total ruin, but the sculpture from the Sempukuji temple has been preserved to this day. Moved to one of the filter rooms creates a new space for meditation that a man can visit and remember former residents.
Both facts were combined to create a new chapel in the form of a square-shaped building, consisting of a corridor space - a profane and a sacred for a proper chapel. Now here, the former residents can come back and pray for their families, lay flowers in the memory od the past. |
| Filter B | Observatory
When the first inhabitants appeared on the island in 1887, Hashima was shaped as a natural uplift of the ocean, covered with vegetation. During the intense period of human expansion, the natural environment on the island was degraded by dense buildings and omnipresent concrete. The only element that overcomes time is nature - gradually covering all evidence of human activity. In addition, life on the island was closely related to constant staying in society. There is no place here where a man would experience a natural isolation. In a symbolic way, the circle refers to the infinity and flow of natural processes. |
| Filter C | Maze
The island as an architectural entity raises many important questions regarding the humanization of public space. In 1959, the number of inhabitants of the island reached 5 259 people. The island become one of the most densely populated places in the world. To illustrate this number and at the same time to trace the traces of every inhabitant of the island, an installation in shape of a labyrinth was designed. Every resident of the island appears as a light point on the wall of the corridor. Following the labyrinth man realizes how many traces of former inhabitants he has to deal with. Man delves into the maze. The height of the walls decreases to allow, in the final phase of exploration, to see all the light points together. |
| Filter D | Tunnel
During the Second World War, Korean prisoners were brought to the island. They were forced to work in the mine in a three-shift system for 12 hours a day, going down in tunnels to a depth up to 1000 meters below sea level, where the temperature reached 50 degrees. In the narrow corridors they spent most of their time on the island. They got inadequate food rations and lived in 7 people in quarters of less than 10 meters. Some of them (about 130 people from 600) died of exhaustion or, in the act of infirmity, decided to commit suicide by jumping into the sea. Going inside the tunnel, the man has a chance to get familiar with the full history of the island, which currently seems to be forgotten. |
| Filter E | Souvenirs |
In 1974, Mitshubishi decided to close down the Hashima coal mine. In 12 weeks, one of the most densely populated places in the world, got completely deserted, and became a witness of the proces of decay – the disappearing architecture of the XX century. "Ghost Town." Till now, a man can find the souvenirs from the period of the island's activity, mainly objects of everyday life: ceramics, furniture, fabrics, posters. The pavilion E shape reflects the outline of the island. The man comes in the space, where the floor reveals the projection of the island in a scale 1:300. Extruded buildings from the plan are forming a spatial structures of exposure for items found on the island. |
| Filter F | Living unit
A typical apartment for a mine worker and his family was only 9,9 sqm. According to Japanese tradition, this area was convertible into six tatami mats, which can be seen in the floor panels division. This space called a day zone - the main element of the equipment was a TV set and a place to brew tea. The room was usually inhabited by 6 people (three generations). The space of the room was separated from the main corridor by a small space in form of a vestibule - a bath and a drying room. * the number of TV sets per one inhabitant on Hashima Island was the highest in the world. |
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