Notes Vol. 1: "Garden"

Notes is a publication featuring editors specializing in architecture and urbanism, with each issue focusing on a different theme primarily through interviews. Its unique structure is striking, simultaneously presenting records of conversations with people of various skills, knowledge, and experience, alongside accompanying annotations, illustrations, and photographs.

The first issue, themed "Gardens"—a point of contact between nature and culture, and a place of rest—was reprinted after being unavailable for several years. Approximately 1,000 corrections were made, and the size was made more compact.

Spearheaded by an interview with Tomoki Yamauchi, an aesthetician and gardener known for his translation of Gilles Clément's "The Moving Garden" and, more recently, a new translation of "Derek Jarman's Garden," the issue presents a different perspective on how to create new gardens, a fresh look at corners of the city, imagination for the future natural environment, and the daily life and work alongside gardens, through conversations with people from various fields such as urban ecologists, chefs, and musicians. Responses to photographer Yurika Takano's photos on the theme of "gardens" and citations from texts by Carl Theodor Sørensen, a leading landscape architect of the 20th century, are provided with the editors' annotated notes, attempting a dialogue that transcends not only direct interaction but also place and time, around the platform of "gardens" that embraces discussions from practitioners in different fields.

In an era full of difficulties in human-non-human interactions, such as the Great Earthquake, the COVID-19 pandemic, and natural disasters, this issue considers the "garden" as a place to re-examine these points of contact.
The book's design, which adopts a vertically long format, and its notebook-like structure with dialogue on the left page and annotations on the right, give a sense of both ingenuity and necessity to its editorial choices.