At the "Design Review 2025" held at Fukuoka University on Saturday, March 22nd and Sunday, March 23rd, Fukumitsu Reina (graduated from the Department Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering Department of Architecture, March 2025/Saga Kita High School) received the Critique Award (Igarashi Jun Award), which is given to works that the judges particularly note.
The event is run primarily by students attending universities across Kyushu with architecture-related departments, and is the oldest student design exhibition.
Fukumitsu's graduation design theme, selected from approximately 500 submissions, was "public village." To alleviate the problems of depopulation in his hometown, a small village, he proposed opening parts of the barn and house to the public, creating a place to sell agricultural produce and for visitors to the village. He came up with a building system that would allow various interactions to take place from the comfort of one's own home, while treating waste materials from demolished local buildings as a stock of building materials for the region, and would repeat its metabolism without using new materials. Similar situations exist all over Japan, where the population is aging and the birthrate is declining, and the idea of preventing elderly people from feeling lonely while living in their own homes was highly praised.
Fukumitsu's work was also selected as one of the 100 best designs at the Red Brick Block Graduation Design Exhibition, which received over 1,000 entries, and was exhibited at the Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse.
[Faculty of Architecture and Civil Engineering]
