FAMILY GREEN Atelier
Concept Design & Program Consulting for a Monthly Family Event Series

Partners
Machino Research Institute, Inc.

Venue
Azabudai Hills Central Green ／ Gazenbo Yokokawa Shozo Memorial Park

Role
Event Concept Design ／ Program Consulting

Period
Concept development from 2024; event series launched April 2025

Azabudai Hills opened in 2024, designed around Thomas Heatherwick's concept of an "extraordinary three-dimensional explorable landscape." The brief was for an experience rooted in its neighbourhood — something families would return to, again and again. What I designed in response was a concept: to celebrate the season quietly, month by month, and to reweave the culture of 和 (wa) by gathering in a circle and talking it through in creative language.

Koyomi no wa
A monthly gathering in Azabudai, Tokyo, tasting the twenty-four solar terms through the senses.

Written in hiragana, wa holds three meanings at once: 和, harmony — and so peace; 輪, a circle — and so a cycle; 話, a conversation.

A year holds more than four seasons. The nijūshi sekki — twenty-four solar terms, inherited from the classical East Asian calendar — divide it into periods of roughly fifteen days, each named for what the season is doing: rain that feeds the grain, a first snow that has not yet fallen.

How might the city itself become a companion to a family?

An experience of meeting the traditional twenty-four solar terms through the senses, and creating meanings closer to the present in many kinds of language.


Cloth moved by the wind. Colours and materials that carry warmth or cold. The scent of loquat. The sound of fallen leaves. I imagined the senses waking, sharpening, and tying daily life and the seasons more closely together.

A place whose view and bearing change with the weather, the hour, and the mood of the day.


Within the encounters with the season that happen here — passing through, gathering, staying. My hope was that each of these ways of spending time would arise on its own, and be celebrated.

The names of the sekki are also a record of attention. When daily life ran closer to the ground — to soil, to weather, to light — a shift small enough to pass within a fortnight was still worth noticing, worth naming, worth keeping in the calendar.


The twenty-four solar terms often no longer match what Tokyo actually feels like, though sometimes they still land exactly. Within that gap, and within those moments of recognition, I designed an experience of tasting the beauty and the preciousness of the days we live, and of reweaving our relationship with the season.

35072000+
First event attendanceTotal numbers of eventsTotal attendance

The series continues. Since the consulting contract ended, our partners have carried it on themselves. That the concept of Koyomi no wa lives on, in the hands of children, in the gaze of families, in the expertise of the team running it, and in the cycle of Azabudai Hills, is, I think, one answer to what this work was for.

NEXT PROJECT

© Sumire IIKAWA | Project Shiro