With a goal to double the amount of its renewable energy power sources by 2030, Japan has begun to transform abandoned golf courses into massive solar energy plants. As Quartz reports, Kyocera, a company known for its floating solar plants, has started construction on a 23-megawatt solar plant on an old golf course in the Kyoto prefecture (scheduled to open in 2017). The company also plans to break ground on a similar, 92-megawatt plant in the Kagoshima prefecture next year. Pacifico Energy is also jumping on the trend; with the help of GE Energy Financial Services, the company is overseeing two solar plant golf course projects in the Okayama prefecture. The idea is spreading too; plans to transform gold courses into solar fields are underway in New York, Minnesota and other US states as well.
The second episode in "Classic Japan" features the 1966 Kyoto International Conference Center by Sachio Otani. The site of the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, Otani's waterfront conference center unfurls onto nearby Lake Takaragaike via a series of concrete pathways that offset the centre's Brutalist weight. Filmed and edited by Vincent Hecht, a French architect and film maker currently living in Tokyo, the series focuses on Japanese architecture from the 1950s to the 80s.
With the theme, 'Rethinking Comprehensive Design: Speculative Counterculture,' the conference is influenced by Buckminster Fuller’s holistic worldview as the concept of Comprehensive Design was proliferated by the publication of the Whole Earth Catalog, an American counterculture publication, by Stewart Brand in the late 1960s and early 1970s. 45 years have passed since then, and now the concept of Comprehensive Design has evolved from a utopian idea to an actualized design tool. More information after the break.
Photo by Christopher via flickr.com/photos/identity-chris-is. Used under Creative Commons
The International conference center in Kyoto is a geometric megastructure of exposed, reinforced concrete designed by Japanese architect Sachio Otani in 1963. Although relatively unknown, the Center is a unique, Modern masterpiece that re-interprets traditional Japanese architecture and asserts itself powerfully into its peaceful, natural surroundings.
