In this project, we conducted qualitative research to draw out insights toward the implementation of Yokohama city’s vision “Yokohama – where we foster the next generation together, an ideal city for raising children”. By combining interviews with experts and researchers in the fields of inclusive education, community-based comprehensive care, and social work, as well as auto-ethnography surveys conducted by Yokohama’s parents themselves, we not only visualized the issues and concerns that these people face, but also derived important perspectives and hypotheses to assist in implementing policies, through understanding how they manage limited resources in their daily lives.

Circular Design Praxis (CDP) is a movement that values the circular designs that arise from the wealth of local culture and vernacular practices.
By interweaving this creative and embodied knowledge, we aim to bring forth pluriversal and sustainable actualities. CDP takes the recognition of the abundance of our lands as a starting point,from this we will cultivate a place of praxis, coming together as a collective of diverse peoples, backgrounds and expertise. Together we hope to tackle planetary challenges.

RE:STORE, based in Satsuma-sendai city, is a civic circular innovation lab that creates space for people to explore harmonious relationships between humans and nature in daily life. Since its establishment in 2022, RE:STORE has hosted an array of workshops, exhibitions, and communal gatherings aimed at exploring, rediscovering and reproposing the value of regional resources that are often overlooked. RE:STORE connects resources, people and ideas across borders and administrative divisions.

Kyoto Creative Assemblage is a programme dedicated to fostering creativity among business people. Leveraging the perspectives of: humanistic sociology that examine and articulate societal dynamics; speculative design that reinterprets everyday life by building and experiencing alternative realities; and art practice that disrupts existing frameworks and prevents easy conclusions, the programme brings together instructors from three leading universities in Kyoto and pioneering creative practitioners to guide participants in shaping new worldviews.

Bambooful is a regenerative design education and tourism programme in Satsuma-sendai City, renowned for having one of the largest bamboo forest area in Japan. The programme aims to revitalise neglected bamboo forests, addressing a local concern. Despite renewed attention towards bamboo amid global calls for a transition to a decarbonised society, we face a number of challenges on the ground. Bambooful works to design new relationships between people and nature, employing spatial design and pluralistic interventions in bamboo forest ecosystems to enable “mass and continuous use” – a key to the sustainable management of bamboo forests.

Repack is a two-year research and design project between Taiwan and Japan, initiated with funding from the Toyota Foundation. Under the theme “Human-centred recycling system design for food packaging and services in light of changing hygiene concepts due to pandemics”, the project explored recycling systems for food packaging with designers, engineers, researchers and business people in the two countries.
Re:public was responsible for the overall planning and organisation of the project as well as the Japanese Office, while REnato Lab, which plays a central role in the circular economy policy and industrial transitions in Taiwan, assumed the Taiwan Office.

The Local SDGs Leadership Program ‘migakiba’ is a hands-on programme organised by the Ministry of the Environment that aims to envision and manifest future circular societies through dialogical exploration of regional resources and cultures. With the support of local pioneering practitioners in their respective regions as lecturers and mentors, the programme has spawned new projects in various regions with their unique natural environments and cultural/ historical backgrounds.

CIRCULAR DESIGN WEEK 2023 was a 7-day journey that offered participants from diverse backgrounds opportunities to collectively explore the transition to a more pluriversal and sustainable world, by providing a valuable window into the vernacular practices rooted in the various lands of Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan.

Road To Shine is an innovation program that bridges young, engineering talents in India with leading Hiroshima industries. Together, they consider new trends of digital transformation and global trends in re-imagining and launching new businesses. In 2020, Hiroshima Prefectural Government signed an MoU with T-Hub in Telangana State, to commemorate the commitment towards building an innovation ecostytem across Japan and India.

Satsuma Future Commons (SFC) is a hub for a new urban design research and practice. We explore, research, and implement new methods of Circular City Design in Satsumasendai City, Kagoshima. In the hub we, Re:public, Inc. research the futures of food, fashion, living spaces, and infrastructures with Kyushu University School of Design. We also run the Civic “Circular” Innovation Lab to empower citizens to make their everyday life more circular and innovative. We cover circularity from a wide scope: from citizens’ everyday life to entrepreneurship and advanced research.

Moment is a trans-local magazine that explores the future of cities from an international and inter-disciplinary lens. The magazine introduces citizen-led transformations of environments and lifestyles that occur based on the reinterpretation of local technologies, resources, and cultures.

How can we create a new normal lifestyle with local things and culture?

How can we empower human exchange beyond the regional boundary and create new type of jobs?