BABY TURTLE: Hikikormori - the Project Programme

First Step to Re-enter Society

Hikikomori is a silent group of city dwellers who go unnoticed by the world that rushes by them. They hide in the very city that has forgetten about their presences The first step cannot be forced. Hikikormori must themselve want top return. The outside world is too abrupt. WE NEED A MEDIUM

Skill Set/ Employment

Many hikikomori are savvy with high tech, having used the computer as their major means of communication isolation. They will tend to take up jobs that do not require physical contact, like computer related programming or software design...

Sony Building for Hikikomori

(a collaboration with SEGA Club)

Every year, gamers are required to test new games and programs before they are released to the mass market. The job of the gamer depends of the interaction of man and machine/ program and human to human interaction can be kept to the minimum

Technology thus is the best medium for hikikomori to re-intergate into society

Project

Many projects in Japan aim to make hikikomoris recover from their reclusiveness. They install programmes to encourage visual contacts and physical interactions even when hikikomoris fear to step out of their rooms. All have failed.

Sony Building Project aims to integrate hikikomori as part of society in the economics sense and not the social sense. We believe that society should respect their choice of a different lifestyle and their silent mode of communication. We believe that the indifferent man on the streets is no different in spirit from a hikikomori.

We believe hikikomori to embody the new concept of relationship. Interaction will happen when they deem fit and should not be enforced

THIS IS THE NEW SOCIAL VALUE OF THE NEW GENERATION

SITE Akihabara, Tokyo

This is the location site I selected of Sony building for the Hikikomori Sony Building Diagram

Refine the programme

"the way we understand the programme is very abstract, so it cant become a form. It cannot be turned into something that is an identifiable form, because it is just too abstract to become so well defined. So the most important thing is how the relationship occurs" - Kazuyo Sejima

The programme is the mediator between hikikomori and the normal man. The act and nature of gaming - a person facing a PC screen is similar to what hikikomori do ( even in terms of their psyche ). Thus, the programme and its act will never be rejected by any sides. The presence of another human being in the same room can hence be accepted by a hikikomori Redefining the Wall A corridor. A narrow space flanked by two walls which leaves a person nowhere to hide and nothing to pretend to be distracted by or engaged in Eventual confrontation with the stranger

How can a wall remain a boundary yet not insist on its presense to seperate and divide?

How can a wall act as a medium of interaction and to hide?

The empty wall does not reveal any secrets of its residents. The meaning of a wall is the construct of the architect. A wall of everyday items however tells a person who bothers to look, a lot about the resident's habits, lifestyle and personalities. If all necessary boundaries are replaced by shelves of everyday items, is there a need for walls then?

Architecture of Skins

Redefining Communication

To build and maintain a relationship can prove too demanding for many. Can we know just enough of one another so as not to impose and inconvienient? Can we communication without personal and emotional attachments?

Front Street Elevation