Children at the school, their teachers, and a number of university students participated in the planning and construction phases of the project and in making improvements to the park (Fig. 5.6). Between September 2008 and August 2011, eight planning workshops were held involving 78 children and 8 teachers from the school and 12 students from the environmental planning course at Kyushu Institute of Technology.
At first, the children were surveyed about the kind of insects and plant life they hoped to find in the park. During workshops, they were asked to make final presentations about their image of the park based on everything that had been talked about in the previous workshops. The children made a number of suggestions for the water environment, in particular regarding the shape of the bridge and the depth of the water (Fig. 5.7). They also came out in favor of planting fruiting trees to attract birds and evergreen and deciduous trees to attract small animals and insects. In this way, they were thus able to gain a basic knowledge of the regional ecosystem and its flora and fauna.
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Fig. 5.6 Survey at the pond with children and university student |
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Fig. 5.7 The children are presenting their ideas to the residents |
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Fig. 5.8 Model of the park(biotope) by Keitaro ITO Laboratory (1/100). (Photograph taken by K. Ito, June 2009) |
Following this, the final drawing and the model were completed by Keitaro ITO’s Laboratory (Fig. 5.8) and children’s and the university students’ cooperation in constructing the landscape element (Fig. 5.9).
