NEWS: Built environment going green

Island City, Fukuoka is ideal to raise children for life at walking speed. — Picture by SHUNYA SUSUKI
Island City, Fukuoka is ideal to raise children for life at walking speed. — Picture by SHUNYA SUSUKI

JAPANESE eco-warrior Shunya Susuki still vividly remembers the evening of Sept 3, 1989.

Shunya Susuki in S-2 � a solar electric car he had crafted from recycled products � as featured in Mainichi Daily News on Feb 3, 1997
Shunya Susuki in S-2 � a solar electric car he had crafted from recycled products � as featured in Mainichi Daily News on Feb 3, 1997
Shunya Susuki strongly identifies with mottainai, an ancient Japanese belief of using resources modestly.
Shunya Susuki strongly identifies with mottainai, an ancient Japanese belief of using resources modestly.
The six-month long Asian-Pacific Exposition: Fukuoka ‘89 (Japan) was coming to an end.

As the evening wore on, he became more and more worried. Then a deep sadness engulfed Susuki, who was an architectural engineer with Fukuoka City Hall at the time.

People were enjoying themselves at the party following the closing ceremony of the exposition but Susuki, who was in charge of the project from beginning to end, was only thinking of his next task: to supervise the removal of “all temporary buildings” at the site.

Then he saw his work destroyed before his eyes and it was hard to take.
“I strongly felt mottainai or a feeling to cherish something,” says Susuki, alluding to the concept of mottainai, an ancient Japanese belief of wasting less, conserving more and using resources modestly.

That heart-rending event was one of several episodes in Susuki’s life which would shape his attitudes towards the environment.

The discovery of traces of black rain on the bonnet of his white car shortly after that would also affect him profoundly.

It hit him then: the severity of air pollution at Toyohama Town, where he has been living with his family for more than 38 years now.

He “began to think about how to get rid of car exhaust pollution” and an idea came to him at home after watching The World Solar Challenge, an Australian television programme.

It became “his mission to produce a car (which would run) without petrol”.

Not long after that he visited France and saw pre-schoolers walking with their teacher along the traditional buildings in Paris and recognised the wisdom of that field trip.

“I thought it was impossible to teach Japanese children mottainai during the bubble economy in Japan because adults were breaking usable buildings in front of the youngsters,” says Susuki, who is now a coordinating officer with UN-Habitat Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific which is based in Fukuoka.

His next trip was to Australia where he chanced upon a building with only outer walls at Sydney’s monorail and realised that “this was the way to rebuild the interior of a building (in order) to preserve its exterior”.

Suddenly it dawned on him that Australia “had been cherishing old things too”.

On the flight home, he was troubled by the possibility that Japanese children “might not cherish old things including their elders in future” and he admits today that this is his greatest fear.

Susuki was spurred into action by the above experiences and he became an environmentally-active individual.

He began to focus on finding solutions to green problems and “educating children on the environment”.

A visit to his Earth Friendly website (www.geocities.jp/shunya_susuki/susuki-E.html) will reveal his green-related visionary endeavours, among other works of art.

Susuki created his website on June 9, 2003 and five years later it became the first item you would see out of 33,700,000 references when you search for Earth Friendly in Japanese.

An English version appeared on Jan 9, 2008.

Susuki, who is also a teacher of creativity at his former senior high school, has produced solar electric cars, recycled artwork and kites of unusual designs (see pictures on the left).

A professor at Kyushu University where Susuki studied modern and traditional architecture as well as urban planning once praised him as “the man who was born to make new things”, an apt description of the multi-talented Japanese, who constantly innovates new ideas and products.

His creations have attracted the attention of the Japanese media and they are conversation pieces among those who are familiar with his work.

Future projects will include “making a new type of machine such as a car or robot” or “robot legs to assist walking”.

He is also mulling over the prospects of converting sea water to fresh water.

Susuki has the elderly in mind when he talks about “simple vehicles or robot legs”.

When these become readily available “to assist the elderly, people will not have to use cars in their neighbourhoods”.

Susuki’s Utopia — an area without conventional cars moving on its roads such as Zermatt village in Switzerland, Venice in Italy, Disneyland and the site of the Asian-Pacific Exposition: Fukuoka ‘89 before the structures were dismantled — now seemed a distinct possibility.

The 54-year-old father of two believes that children hold the key to tackling the world’s environmental issues.

He is a champion of environmental education and especially likes the way the subject is taught to children in the Swiss ski resort of Zermatt.

“I think we should learn how to teach students about it sensitively, like the Swiss.”

Environmental problems are neither purely technological nor purely economic. They are also ethical and it is critical to understand all their dimensions.

Susuki calls on communities everywhere to use the opportunity the current economic recession offers to imagine creating wealth which addresses both social concerns and environmental limits.

As he philosophically puts it: “I think money is nothing but a means to self-realisation. Making money should not be the sole purpose of one’s life. One is happiest when one utilises one’s inborn talents for one’s society.

“Teachers, parents and societies are obliged to discover children’s natural talents and nurture them.”