Existing Futures: Teaching Experiments in Maintenance, Media, and Urban Occupation, an exhibition by Frank Gehry International Visiting Chair in Architectural Design Yusuke Obuchi, is on now in the Larry Wayne Richards Gallery at 1 Spadina until September.

Visit the exhibition during building hours Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Do humans have empathy for objects?

Yusuke Obuchi, 2025/26 Frank Gehry International Visiting Chair in Architectural Design at the University of Toronto, believes that a human connection to the things we make is an important part of building a sustainable future.

“How we feel towards an object – particularly the object we make with care, passion and joy – we create an attachment,” says Obuchi. “My approach to creating, sustainably, isn't about how to build an efficient building or how to save energy. But rather, if we’re to have a feeling towards the things we make or use, maybe we can use them longer – and that might be the best way to approach sustainability in the future.”

Established in 2002 and named in honour of the late Toronto-born architect Frank Gehry (Hon LLD 1998), the visiting chair enables students at U of T’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design to learn first-hand from world-leading architects. Since its establishment 25 years ago, more than 20 international architects have held the U of T appointment.  

“Yusuke has brought unique perspectives to our students, helping them see how the interaction between digital environments and themselves still includes that eminently human imperfection that is the essence of human making,” says Robert Levit, acting dean of Daniels. “The ideals of precision and objectivity associated with digital making, with machines and with optimization are, in Yusuke’s teaching, subject to the same sorts of discoveries of indirection associated with traditional crafts. He has also introduced a timely consideration of how to reuse materials, recasting them into unexpected roles and imaginatively reshaping our environments.”

“Yusuke has made an invaluable contribution to the culture of Daniels, and we hope to continue our collaboration with him into the future,” adds Levit.

Obuchi studied architecture at U of T from 1988 to 1991 before completing his degree at Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). He previously co-directed the Design Research Laboratory at the Architectural Association in London, U.K. He is currently an associate professor at the University of Tokyo, where his Obuchi Lab (G30) conducts interdisciplinary research to explore emerging discourses on architecture and urbanism.

One such project is the lab's STIK design — Smart Tool Integrated Konstruction — an experimental pavilion inspired by the shape of Japan’s Mount Fuji and made from 1 million chopsticks. It explores the angle of repose, the steepest angle of a pile of granular material before it starts to slump, or slide.

"In Japan, things are thrown away with care,” says Obuchi, noting how Japanese society is framed around the native religion of Shintō, the worship of spirits in objects or in nature. Seeing neatly piled chopsticks, he began to consider their potential as building material.

"What happens when you drop the chopsticks, instead of [making a pile], you can make a wall that binds together? What would happen if you dropped the chopsticks together with glue?”

For STIK, the team developed their own rudimentary “3D printer” that dispensed chopsticks and bio glue. Structural calculations and real-time 3D scanning minimized structural failure, as the system could provide real-time feedback as to where more chopsticks were needed.  

“The end result is optimized ideal form. Maybe not the way you wanted it – because depending on who makes it, the outcome is different – but the system is always the same,” says Obuchi.

He explains digital fabrication is understood for its precision, speed and the calculations that programs can do easily, with accuracy.

“But maybe we can turn that whole concept around. ‘Computer, you can fix what we do; human is the one that is making,” he says. “[Our lab uses] a traditional mode of tool – an extension of your hands. It’s all operated by a device attached to the body, so it’s augmenting human capability, but we’re not disengaged from the production.”

Similarly, the lab’s TOCA pavilion – Tool Operated Choreographed Architecture – was modeled from a collection of computer-catalogued gestures, with the final structure mimicking their arm swings.

"We create a condition where everybody can participate, and everybody can be part of the design and fabrication at the same time. And because you build it, you have empathy. You feel for the things you build.”

Last term, eleven master’s students in the architecture program at Daniels participated in Obuchi’s Options Studio course, “Radical Maintenance.”

“Society is progressing, but this progress requires a constant searching for the new, which causes a lot of problems, environmentally. So radical maintenance is how we conceptualize maintenance as a catalyst for something new,” Obuchi says.

He explains, how at one time, Japan’s Omishima Island was the site of a productive mandarin orange grove but was later abandoned and overtaken by dense vegetation.

“I started working with [Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning architect] Toyo Ito on some of the ideas to reimagine the island. Not in the way in which a city like Toronto is expanding, but when the country is shrinking, the economy is reduced in scale due to populace, what are the kinds of architectural possibilities? We bring students to the island to test out these ideas.” 

Read: Master's student work on exhibit at the Toyo Ito Museum of Architecture

Obuchi says like many other places in Japan, Omishima Island is facing the same social issues of an aging society, population decline and loss of agricultural grounds.

“For those who are interested in coming to the island to start an agricultural business, it would be very difficult because there are no places to stay,” he says. “Students are designing a little house and imagining what the kind of business would be associated with it.”

Much like his approach to digital fabrication, Obuchi starts with the material, and in this case, what is available on the island, be it earth, bamboo or trees.

“I start with the immediate, material relationship and then extend into larger sociological or economic issues,” he says.

During his appointment at Daniels, Obuchi taught undergraduate courses investigating temporary and mobile housing, from tourist campsites to emergency shelters, as well as the realities of urban homelessness and displacement.

“Architecture cannot solve all social issues, but it has to address it,” he says.

His own introduction to architecture was the result of radical action. He quit high school and joined a construction site until he had enough money saved to buy a plane ticket to the U.S.  

Living on a budget of $1.50 per day, he says he observed cities through the lens of finding a place to sleep each night. Hitchhiking through multiple U.S. states, he crossed into Canada with the help of a McDonald’s truck driver. The driver’s son later advised Obuchi that if architecture was his passion, he should attend U of T.

"I went to the [Toronto] Board of Education and said, ‘I didn't finish high school in Japan, but I would like to study.’ This was in the 1980s... It's hard to imagine now,” he says, recalling his job bussing tables at Clinton’s Tavern paid for his tiny apartment above, roughly $150 per month.

While later studying architecture at U of T, the student-led lecture series invited American architect and SCI-Arc educator, Michael Rotondi.

“Maybe I was quite persistent, so he gave me a job,” Obuchi says.

What he intended to be only a summer-long internship in Los Angeles lasted six years, with the completion of his architectural studies at SCI-Arc.

“Some of my former teachers are still teaching here, so it’s nice to rejoin them at U of T.”

Story and photo by Nina Haikara