We consider living in the suburbs and commuting to the city to work matter-of-course. Nevertheless, the city is not by nature a place just for work. The city is meant to be lived in. Here I wanted to show how the city might be made livable, even though the particular project was located in the middle of Osaka. This area now functions as a transfer point in the transportation network serving the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe metropolitan region. However, I saw the area as not just a point of transit but a case study for how Osaka might develop in the future.
This is a proposal for a new way of urban dwelling. It is neither a nostalgic return to a medieval form of urban dwelling nor an attempt to create twentieth century-type suburban dwellings in the center of Osaka. It in fact closely resembles the city of Hong Kong. Hong Kong is in reality chaotic; it is not a city neatly planned according to function. It is a city in which activities take place 24 hours a day. Late at night, a person might be sitting down in front of his computer and starting his work in one unit as the family nextdoor is sleeping after a day of work. In the “Incubator City” that is proposed here, people continually create, experience and (in preparation for future activities) “incubate” their own city. We call the sum total of such activities the city.
