The Importance of Local Oriented Dissemination of Reconstruction: The Design of Tohoku Reconstruction & DRR Pavilion

The Tohoku Reconstruction & Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) Pavilion at the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction was designed to provide information on and ideas about the great East Japan earthquake (GEJE) disaster and the reconstruction efforts and lessons learned from it. Disseminating information on disaster and reconstruction is essential to achieving DRR by multistakeholders through sharing knowledge such as objective perspectives, the historical background of disaster responses and the reality of reconstruction. The pavilion’s original production structure lacked a scheme unifying strong regional institutions such as the International Research Institute of Disaster Science and local creative talent. The original pavilion proposal also did not convey the disaster’s multiple facets. The Sendai School of Design (SSD) served as an intermediate platform for unifying academic knowledge, regional creative professionals and local bodies. The SSD designed and produced a pavilion for the diverse visitors from different backgrounds, literacy, experience and language with the local oriented production structure for dissemination directed by T. Iwasawa with the supervision by Y. Onoda. Effective dissemination enhances awareness and helps promote the DRR and implement reconstruction through the sharing of information. The local oriented production structure proved to effectively organize local power and knowledge for this purpose.