Edo. Four hundred years ago, this was the city that would become Tokyo. At its heart was Nihonbashi, a flourishing economic and cultural hub. However, today, Nihonbashi is a forest of office buildings. The area’s scenic beauty, its cultural identity, and its charm are gradually fading away. That's why Mitsui Fudosan which is the largest city developing company in Japan try to bring back the charm of this traditional area, and to breathe new life into Japanese culture. This was our mission and we call this Nihonbashi Revitalization Plan.

We transformed that dead space in the urban canyon from a place where the winds gather, into a place where people come together by recreating Japanese cultural identity with the power of data.

Our idea was “Cherry Blossom Show Wind”. We focused on the constant winds that blow down an urban canyon between towering buildings. The cherry blossom viewing which is called “Hanami” in Japan has been a familiar part of Japanese culture identity since ancient times. By merging the wind with the digitally created shower of cherry blossoms, we transformed the urban dead space into a modern, three-dimensional cherry blossom viewing experience. It seems like the shower of cherry blossoms in show window.

We calculated complex wind flows to design strips of material that would appear beautiful in any context, to create projection movies and to program moving illuminations. Moreover, traditional kimono patterns were digitally recreated and projected upon the material so the patterns moved in synch with the winds.

We gathered the past wind seeds data in that urban canyon which were logged every single hour and finally got the average wind speed. The average speed was most suitable for creating the shower of cherry blossoms experience.