SMART CRAFT STUDIO in Hida, Japan

Smart Craft Studio is an intensive 3-week design prototyping program that aims to integrate traditional woodworking technique known as Kumiki with physical computation and programming. The Kumiki technique is a system of interlocking woodcrafting technique and its application ranges from architecture to wooden puzzles for toys.

During the program, participants will learn about the processing of wood harvesting, to have hands-on lessons to learn about traditional kumiki (wood joinery) technique from the master craftsmen; and to learn about physical computation using open source hardware and sensors from Professor Kobayashi from Institute of Advanced Media and Sciences (IAMAS). We will have visits to local artisan studios, furniture factory, and sightseeing tours on the weekends.

For the design studio, participants will work in teams to build prototypes of Smart Craft objects or modular systems which can respond to users or its surrounding environments. Each team is expected to present 2 functional prototypes at the end of the 3-week program.

The program will be conducted primarily in English with translation from Japanese.