5th Brazil-Japan Seminar on Cultural Environments

Date: 29 February 2020

Time: 16:30~18:00

Place: Institute of Brazilian Architects (IAB-SP)

Co-organization: Environmental Disaster Research Unit, Graduate School of Advanced Integrated Studies of Human Survivability (GSAIS), Glocal Information Platform, Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) of Kyoto University; Production of Space and Regional Redefinitions Research Group (GAsPERR); Institute of Brazilian Architects (IAB-SP) TBC

This seminar, in a round table format, will gather scholars and practitioners from varied backgrounds to discuss the socio-natural mechanisms behind the production of space in Brazil and in Asia. Japanese architects, urban planners and geographers have described the formation of human settlements as the emergence of a second nature. Institutions, natural elements, and emotions shape the spaces in cities and villages following the psycho-physiological needs of the human body. Past human settlements formed in response to the human body features and needs in terms of walking distances, access to fresh water and food, and the potential of a place for maintaining healthy and hygienic spaces for everyday life. The apparition of modern institutions, alongside innovations in science and technology, supported the emergence of transformations that follow intrinsic mechanisms of maintenance increasingly detached from the human nature and other natural processes.

The individual human body nowadays feed from far-away food, air, water, objects, ideas, and other human bodies through expansive networks of mobility and communication. This process results in new forms of spatial organization marked by spread urbanization, which exists beyond established definitions of city, but which also evade traditional definitions of the rural, including the formation of temporary spaces as basis for the establishment of permanent settlements. This process also leads to the formation of human settlements dedicated to a non-material production (software or knowledge) which depends upon the natural resources of a locality (water, food or energy). How much food do we need to produce a social media software that will intermediate the emotions of millions of concrete and virtual relationships? How much water has been consumed in the “agreste” region of Caruaru, or how many trees were cut down in the Zona Franca de Manaus, in order to produce the equipment used to shoot films about the human condition in Brazil? How the specificity of the human condition in Brazil, as shown in films or presented in world exhibitions, affects the emotional and physical needs of people in Asia?

This seminar will engage geographers, architects, film makers, among others, to critically examine from their personal and professional experiences in Brazil and in Asia, the linkage existent between the human nature and enlarged socio-natural processes shaping the everyday life inside and outside cities.