Methods for Embedding Care and Maintenance in Everyday Infrastructures

Since the modern era, infrastructure such as roads and bridges has often been perceived as robust and permanent. In contrast, moderator Edward Masui (RE:PUBLIC Inc.)introduced anthropologist Shannon Mattern’s proposition that “infrastructure is always in a state of breakdown” as the starting point for discussion.
Where society has long prioritized innovation (often equated with technological advancement), we must now shift toward maintenance: tending to what inevitably deteriorates and continually drawing out its latent potential. Furthermore, Masui emphasized that maintenance should not be dismissed as a mere repair cost but redefined as care—a practice that enhances and sustains value. Precisely because things break down, we attend to them. This process of care lies at the heart of sustainable social foundations.

Miki Namba (Kagoshima University) presented the example of a “flowing bridge” in Laos—designed with the assumption that it will wash away when the river floods. Rather than resisting natural forces, the community rebuilds it each time. This cycle embodies socio-ecological resilience, where destruction and creation are inseparable.
From this case, Namba reexamined the concept of responsibility. Responsibility, she argued, is not an externally imposed duty (responsibility/ accountability), but rather response-ability: the capacity to react and act in the face of change. By refraining from externalizing risk and maintenance to specialists, and instead enabling users to build and maintain the bridge themselves, a form of sustainability emerges that is less dependent on institutional frameworks.

Miki Namba

What determines a building’s lifespan? Atsushi Yamazaki (Takenaka Corporation) suggested that beyond legal durability standards, it is the degree of attachment people feel that truly determines longevity.
In his “Architecture Becoming a Forest” project for Expo 2025 Osaka-Kansai, Yamazaki used 3D-printed biodegradable resin and handmade Japanese paper embedded with seeds, envisioning a building that, once its role ends, decays and returns to the forest—a planned “death” of architecture. In renovation projects, he combined subtractive “deconstruction” (removing unnecessary floors) with wooden extensions, achieving significant reductions in waste and CO₂ emissions.
Central to these efforts is the concept of keinen-bika (経年美化) —“beauty through aging.” By designing processes that allow human hands to participate in maintenance, buildings become integrated into their communities, cultivating attachment that supports intergenerational continuity.

Atsushi Yamazaki

Risa Furukawa (Niidome School Foundation) presented the Niidome Elementary School project, which seeks to revive a school closed 18 years ago. She defined the school as a hub of diverse capital—social relationships, culture, and more. The disappearance of a school can lead to the erosion of these forms of capital and the collapse of local ecosystems. Conversely, rebuilding a rich environment for learning can revitalize the entire community.
Critiquing contemporary education for externalizing learning from daily life, Furukawa emphasized internalization—centering food and language and engaging children as active participants in everyday living. For example, children operating a restaurant to fund a school excursion becomes training in autonomously organizing their own lives. Schools, in this sense, function as “living infrastructure,” archiving embodied knowledge and transmitting the spirit of care and maintenance to future generations.

Risa Furukawa

The discussion centered on balancing participation and responsibility in infrastructure and architecture. Namba suggested that designing systems in which stakeholders build and use from within allows responsibility to shift from legal obligation to distributed response among participants.
Yamazaki spoke about the need for designers to assume a certain level of risk amid increasingly stringent safety standards, thereby reconstructing criteria that accept aging and transformation over time.
Furukawa criticized adult-imposed safety standards as often functioning to evade adult responsibility, depriving children of opportunities to develop their own capacity to navigate risk. The session concluded with shared recognition that designing yohaku (余白, margin) or “room for engagement”—spaces in which people can remain involved across generations over long time spans—constitutes a critical future task.