Quite a few commercial companies have been researching environmental themes, trying to come up with more sustainable designs and solutions. Some of them – such as Japanese Shiseido – have also been developing installations to invite people to ponder about the beauty of nature in the hearts of our cities.
We may have partially forgotten about the COVID-19 pandemic, even though the virus is still out there, but, when it first started spreading and cities went into lockdown and streets emptied, we all got the chance to think more about the relationship between human beings, the urban environment in which they live and nature.
The empty streets of Ginza, one of Japan's most commercial districts, prompted beauty company Shiseido to study the ecology of the area where its headquarter is located and, with the help of architectural studio Hakuten, the company came up with the "Ginza Ecology Map".
The latter is a three-dimensional map of Ginza for Shiseido’s window display (inside there are further installations exploring three themes – "Plants", "Land", and "Human Activities"): the map is divided in boxes, each of them with a specimen collected in the area between 2021 and 2022.
The 72 sections of the shelves feature plants and soil collected through fieldwork in the area and neatly arranged and the map can be conceived as an environmentally friendly representation of Ginza and therefore an alternative map of this area that gives a new allure to Ginza, transforming it from a commercial area to a city of sustainability.
Hakuten's researchers Yosuke Nakazato and Koji Nakae found out that in Ginza many of the street trees are flowering trees, obviously inhabited by their unique ecosystem. The most surprising thing for the researchers was the fact that their fieldwork made them realize that, although they often walked around the area, they didn't know much about it. Nakazato and Nakae therefore started paying attention to things they normally wouldn't notice, from plants to living organisms and the soil that nurtures them.
The research also turned into a collective project as the designers interviewed people about the history and origins of Ginza and of the businesses located in the area, discovering another unexpected side of the distrisct that they didn't know about.
The map is therefore a medium for passersby to retrain their eyes to notice wild flowers, plants and creatures while walking along busy streets, coming up with a new way of walking the city.
Maybe the concept behind the map could be replicated in other cities around the world to teach us the beauty of nature is all around us – we just need to open our eyes and see it.
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