My first impression of this workshop is that it enabled me to get a tactile sense of a city in the grips of growth.  In Japan, particularly Tokyo, one is apt to lose one's sense of reality.  It is a part of the role of the architect to consider the city.  I think I got a real sense of that.  I would add that I realized if we architects confront the city in earnest, we can direct its growth.

That is also a way of saying that here, concepts entirely different from known ideas about Tokyo and cities in the West apply, and that the theme was an extremely difficult one to tackle.  I think this workshop was quite meaningful in that it confronted these questions directly.  Over the course of the workshop, I was able to observe the changing mood of the students: confusion about the city; which changed to anguish over the difficulty of producing an architectural solution; recovery and a determination to go forward; and at the end of the final review, a sense of achievement and a bit of self-examination.  Seeing them immerse themselves completely in architectural and urban issues in a foreign country was quite exciting for me.  I would like to thank Y-GSA and the students for giving me this opportunity.