This is a great watch. There’s a lot more packed into it than a scene-breakdown. It’s so interesting to hear about the creative process of others, but particularly someone as practiced at their craft as Johnson.
Shuetsu Sato began working as a security guard at Shinjuku Station in 2002. With constant construction and infrastructure upgrades, it was Sato’s job to redirect crowds using a megaphone. However, he found it to be an ineffective tool that was ignored by most. So with a few rolls of duct tape and a craft knife he took it upon himself to create some eye-catching signage.
Wayfinding, calligraphy, and typography in the medium of duct tape.
There are a few additional photos on the awards site.
It’s no accident that the most hypergentrified neighborhoods are the ones that took shape before they were regulated out of existence by urban planners who were trying to rationalize cities into separate zones of use. Even when these places went into decline as a result of postwar suburbanization and urban disorder, they rebounded precisely because the building stock and street configurations remained mostly intact.
There are exceptions, of course, but pick most any North American city of decent size and you’ll find at least one comfortable (human-sized), walkable neighborhood with a healthy mix of retail/restaurants, residential, and maybe even commercial. But the core problem is that neighborhood will be one of the older neighborhoods in the city, its zoning mix grandfathered in, and the city’s own modern zoning laws preventing its replication or extension anywhere else in the city.
Yet outside of urban planning circles, most conversations about social isolation stop well short of addressing the physical form of neighborhoods. From sprawling suburbs and gated communities, to unsafe or unwalkable streets, with more acreage given over to parked cars than mixed-income multifamily housing, to the uneven care and distribution of parks, recreation centers, and schools, our built environment often makes connection all but impossible.