Landscape Architecture Australia — February 2018

Kesennuma

Shibitachi

Hirota Bay

Pacific Ocean

Hashikami

2016

Living with the Sea

Open seminar funded by

Australia-Japan Foundation

2016

Affective Geometries

Design propositions for a central park

National Memorial, Hashikami, Japan

Design research studio, RMIT University,

with Tokyo University and Professor

Masao Hijikata, Waseda University

2016

After Landscape IV

Design research seminar, RMIT University

2016

Visiting research fellow

Graduate School of Law,

Meiji University

(with Professor Kenichiro Yanagi)

Atop a slight rise in Hashikami on Japan’s Sanriku Coast,

Marieluise and I came across a small outcrop of shrubs

and weeds and, to our surprise, some flowers. It was in this

moment that we realized this small bed of flowers was all

that remained of a home washed away by the 2011 tsunami.

Marieluise turned to me and said, “This is what we can design

with.” Change is devastating when it happens quickly; it is

sometimes our role to preserve and work with these memories

in times of rapid change, in order for those whose town this

was to not lose their identity and connection to this place.

Hayden Matthys

RMIT University

Thank you so much for coming each year to the

Sanriku area. We are deeply grateful for the concern

you felt for the Tohoku region and for Japan. The

joint RMIT-Tokyo design lab seminars and parties

later in izakaya bars – we have no happier memories.

You are the pride of the landscape design lab, you

are our friend for evermore.

Yū Nakai and Hideya Fukushima

Landscape and Civic Design Lab

University of Tokyo

I will never forget how, despite the language barrier,
we overcame national borders to talk together about
common social problems.

Hitomi Sasaki
Community member who attended high school in
Kesennuma, now resident in Miyagi

PLACEMAKING

the design of the designated national

memorial park in Rikuzen-Hashikami.

Aside from Marieluise’s professional exper-

tise, a significant influence on her approach

to the disaster was her study of aikido.

Practising this modern Japanese martial art

for more than sixteen years offered her

further insights into the cultural intricacies

of Japan merging the seemingly contradic-

tory concepts of martial arts training with a

philosophy of reconciliation and peace.

As Japanese authorities were quick to

promote the construction of the controver-

sial seawalls (covering a combined four

hundred kilometres of coastline, including

sensitive national parks and fishing

grounds), Marieluise tended to the

distressed communities to collectively

uncover the impact of this infrastructure.

In her effort to fight the seawalls she

attained the support of leading landscape

and architecture academics in Europe and

the Americas. Working with ideas of time,

contingency and uncertainty, her projects

foregrounded the enduring power and

beauty of the traditional lifestyle informed

by an intrinsic knowledge of life in balance

with nature, including the acceptance of

reoccurring destructive forces.

As Katrina Simon, senior lecturer at the

University of New South Wales, reflects:

“Her work addressed the complexities of

balancing living safely in a vulnerable

landscape, but also allowing landscape

systems to thrive and enabling people to

connect to them. The challenges posed by

such situations are almost overwhelming,

but also creatively extending and inspiring.

I think part of Marieluise’s legacy will be a

desire to work towards addressing this issue

in Japan and other places similarly affected

by large-scale disaster.”