Keitai City Competition

A new competition sponsored by NTT DoCoMo looking for ideas on how the mobile phone will transform urban environments:

Few tools have become as widely accepted in everyday life in recent years as cell phones. Keitai ("portable"), the shortened term for a cell phone, has come to mean much more than a portable communication terminal; the keitai has become an indispensable tool for constructing the infrastructure of everyday life; the term has taken on a greatly expanded significance to mean new lifestyle media.

How is the city, our immediate environment, developing under these circumstances? In times of great change, the city, in keeping with, or in critical reaction to, that change, has also undergone changes of guise or structure. What sorts of conditions will the city generate in the future, as the keitai becomes an integral part of our lifestyle?

This spatial design competition seeks new proposals concerning the relationship between the urban environment and keitai in the near future. What sorts of conditions, forms and environments will the "keitai city" exhibit? Competition entrants are encouraged to propose images of the future of a "keitai society" unconstrained by preconceptions, or proposals for new spatial designs that make today's assumed worldview seem hackneyed.

1st DoCoMo International Architectural Design Competition 2005 - Top Page