About the artwork

The “snow fences” seen in winter around Tokamachi are fitted wooden boards that act as snow guards to protect windows and doors from heavy snowfalls. Because of these boards, houses are dark inside even in the daytime, and light from the houses cannot be seen from the street, so that in the dark winter the town gets even darker. We wanted with our project to get back a “bright Tokamachi” and at the same time to propose a new community design whereby individual homes would assert their identity vis a vis the community in the form of new “home crests” for each house on the street. The material used was polycarbonate board, which has both strength and transparency, and on these boards were printed the crest designs for each household, designs that were derived from discussions with the residents.