Azabudai Hills / Heatherwick Studio

Making a human district in a global city, There’s a snapshot of an alley in Tokyo, taken two decades ago. It’s unremarkable. It could be a scene from any number of residential neighborhoods, with its familiar tangle of cables, autumn branches, telephone poles, and washing strung across first-floor balconies. On the ground, a vending machine and pot plants are on a flight of stairs. Looking up, a distant skyscraper and a handful of taller buildings against the blue sky. What you can see needs some care. You notice the wall is overtaken by weeds, there are barriers around a garage, and a rusting fence. What you can’t see is the meaning this place holds for the people who lived there, the invisible threads that drew its community together. The story of Azabudai Hills begins with a neighborhood in similar need of renewal, but one that is being stitched together from these threads of memory. It is a new kind of district in the city, made for people and filled with greenery – “a place,” says Thomas Heatherwick “to be cherished.”