Project description

Chicago is a city with a complete park system. Each park in this system is connected by pedestrian and bicycle paths. Our site locates on the north side of Lakefront Park District. It is currently vacant land in an oval shape. In order to make a suitable design for this land, we researched about the frequent visitors in this area and residents' composition near it. We find that a large portion of them are Japanese Americans. After World War II, Japanese Americans lose their cultural identity because of the "Japan-US Assimilation Plan." Thousands of Japanese Americans were resettled in Chicago in 1943. Because of the accelerated assimilation, the third or fourth generations of Japanese Americans have lost their Japanese identity. In this way, our project's goal is to regenerate Japanese identities through landscape experiences.

We plan to build a traditional Japanese-style garden in the garden system in Chicago. Our design theme is miegakure, which focuses on the visitors' experiences of hide and reveal when they explore the garden. Miegakure is common in Japanese gardens, and our miegakure theme is satisfied by applying the hide and reveal of senses: vision, auditory, and olfactory. Therefore, we separated our garden into three parts: the garden of light for the hide and reveal of vision, the courtyard of water for the hide and reveal of auditory, and the path of fragrance for the hide and reveal of olfactory. The hide and reveal theme in all three parts of our garden is satisfied by arranging plants and manipulating the topography.