Planning, absence of: Introduction (old) - List of pages - Wirescape thumbnails

(Wirescape)

Sano - examples of real-life Japanese urban arrangement

In August 1999, Peter Evans reported on "an interesting Japanese response to the tasteful and fascinating-in-ways-I-never-could-have-guessed pages that branch off" from his website. Someone had asked him:

>[W]here are the electric lines in all these Czech towns? I
>see very few. Do they bury them underground? If so, is it
>a common practice throughout the country, or just in
>"historic" spots?

This led to a discussion on various aspects of the typical Japanese town, including in particular the ugliness often produced by stringing wires in unfathomable quantities from utility poles, which again unfathomably appear to be required always on both sides of the road. I always find it difficult to reconcile the reality of this omnipresent ugliness with the gushing prose one finds on books devoted to subjects such as Japanese Design - here are the blurbs from the back of one, "Contemporary Japanese Design" by Siân Evans: "Why Japanese design is pre-eminent throughout the modern world -- How Japanese design combines respect for tradition with an awareness of the needs of the future." This seems to require an extremely narrow view of what "design" is.

I wrote this box a long time ago: in particular the "urban arrangement" in the title was one attempt to say how the urban landscape gets the way it is without using the word that begins with 'P'. In the end, none of this makes any sense to me, so I gave up trying to write the definitive "explanation" of the problem. Instead, here's a collection of puzzles.

On other pages...

The wirescape thumbnail gallery


Cloudscape
600x400 (55 KB)


A house so neatly framed by the wires and poles...
480x360 (55 KB)


Geometrical intersection with the NTT building
750x450 (82 KB)


Typical cross-roads: note wire dangling down to supply street light.
600x400 (55 KB)


The Avenue (Shades of Dutch painting?)
450x300 (26 KB)
Unfortunately, I later discovered that this original idea had been anticipated by Phillip Greenspun


Mt. Fuji - view from my office window, New Year's Day, 2001
600x350 (37 KB)


Near home
600x400 (52 KB)


Saplings in a Darwinian struggle for light
400x600 (80 KB)


Reaching for the sky
400x600 (64 KB)


Elegant simplicity of a more rural arrangement
400x500 (49 KB)


Symphony in amber
400x600 (60 KB)


Wow!
500x500 (78 KB)

----

The Imaginatorium
Home - Search - Site map - Japanese

© Brian Chandler 2000-2004
Copyleft - Contact/FAQ

Other departments
Shop - jigsaw puzzles from Japan
Brian's Bookshelf
Photography
Web Stuff
My digital art - The Artofar-
Torium
Sano Gallery
Selected pages
Walls - Not walls! - Pipes
Thumbnail Gallery
Plant Watcher's Page

WDG validated