The life-supporting foundation of ancient Kyoto, the original Heiankyo, is still vital in the component features of the contemporary City . Kyoto's reputation as a world-renound historic city and its resultant touristic attraction attests to the validity of the principles of its initial foundation:

–  Its NATURAL GENIUS LOCI, the geomancy of Kyoto's placement into nature: embedded into a horseshoe of mountains in the north, east and west; the Kyoto basin slopes gently from the north to the south which is open.

–  Its RIVER OF LIFE; Kyoto is blessed with an abundant supply of water. Its Kamo River transverses the entire City; it was considered sacred and its waters were and still are used for many purification rituals.

–  Its RELIGIOUS GENIUS LOCI, a sequence of Buddhist Temples, Gardens, Shinto Shrines and Early Imperial estates along the foot of the mountains.

–  Its urban URBAN GENIUS LOCI, the grid pattern of its townscape giving the City its basic spatial rhythm and human scale.

–  Its HUMAN INGENUITY, a seemingly inexhaustible abundance of human energy expressing itself in the spatial, cultural and commercial life of the City.

These are the FIVE BASIC ELEMENTS or go-gyo of this unique city, paralleling the five elements which comprized a universe postulated by ancient East Asian science. These Basic Elements stand as the inspiration for our Future Vision of Kyoto.

From subjects to citizens  –  from a rigid grid city to a flexible vitalistic city: Kyoto's history can be read as a struggle of over one thousand years of its population to overcome the original fixed pattern of a cosmic sacred city or city beautiful of Chinese descend and become a city vital and ever changing, just like other typical Japanese cities. That expressed itself in the change from the original city-structure as a whole, a structure based on absolute symmetry and centered on the imperial palace, into a structure which in stages took the Kamo River into its center; in other words, the Blue Dragon now dwells in and animates the belly of Kyoto from inside.

It also expressed itself in the change of its basic initial neighbourhood unit the cho, originally in the shape of one square, surrounded by a street and a wall, to a unit which opens itself to and takes the street into its center. Kyoto's society changed from a closed aristocratic state to an open society, a state of townspeople, basically merchants, artisans and entertainers.

Truly one can not predict the future of any city, but one can say something about the special urban characteristics of the Japanese city. The Japanese city does not follow the well honored and shared aesthetic principles of European urban design.

The next transformation of the structure of Kyoto, the one which is to take place in the 21st century, and which is the contents of this proposal, will see Kyoto still subject to the five basic elements, the wisdom of the earth, and the spirit of the place, as it were, but changing from a national to an international city.

From national to world citizens  –  from a street- to a green-oriented city: Kyoto's mission could very well be to play a role model on this Planet Earth as an environmentally friendly and ecologically sustainable modern city.

The urban rivers, and their edges, might very well be seen as the next frontier of urban development not only in Japan but all over the world. After the War Japanese cities generally didn't treat their rivers gently. Urban river were either filled in to give way to roads, or they were built over with urban motorways and consequently turned into sewers. The fate of the Horikawa in the west of Kyoto is sad.

The Kamo River is beautiful and has been cleaned up over the last ten years. Cranes visit now even the city center; anglers decorate its river banks. Perhaps no other city of Kyoto's size can boast of such clean river water. Our proposal directs the citizen's attention towards this immense resource and suggests to upgrade it into a continuous river garden reflecting and celebrating the seasons and being interrupted by a symphony of the most elegant bridge structures the human being is capable of designing in the Third Millenium. Kyoto should remember that some of Japan's most creative cultural movements started along the Kamo River, such as the Muromachi era gardens built by the

kawaramono and the Kabuki Theatre in early Edo times. Our vision is that the next cultural renewal will again spring from the river.

In the choice of symbol and content of our vision we were inspired by the legend of the moment of the creation, that is, the ORIGIN of Japan as documented in the ancient cosmogonic myth in the Kojiki and Nihongi, and by the cultural sentiment prevalent at the creation, that is, the ORIGIN of Heian culture 1200 years ago. One speaks of a sense of creativity, the other of a sense of transience, both unique aspects of the enduring Japanese culture.

AME NO UKIHASHI: "The Floating Bridge of Heaven" – Symbol of Creativity

In the cosmogony myth in the Kojiki and Nihongi: Izanagi no mikoto and Izanami no mikoto stood on the FLOATING BRIDGE OF HEAVEN, perhaps on the rainbow, and searched for land in the oceans underneath, and then mysteriously created a first island in it with a spear. The ancient Japanese word

for "island", shima, could very well also be translated as "garden". This then became their first place to live on earth. What transpires in this myth is really a sense of the creation of land in the form of a garden. We have to relearn to dream in terms of such energies.

YUME NO UKIHASHI: "The Floating Bridge of Dreams" – Symbol of Transience

The title of Murasaki's final book in the Genji Monogatari, the FLOATING BRIDGE OF DREAMS is usually understood as the supreme clue to the book and the prevailing sentiment of life in Heiankyo: human life seen as dream-like bridge over which we pass from one state of existence to another, in other words, a sense of the ephemeral, of impermanence, transience, and floating, all values which were and are very much inspiring Japan's architecture and town building.

While we can not determine the architectural form of the bridges we can, nevertheless, suggest a parti-

Last not least, a Yume no ukihashi which could be designed for exhibits from Kyoto's origin of Heiankyo on. It could be placed on Nijo, a bridge with very little car traffic.

We do not want to deny or belittle Kyoto's present image as a world-renound historic city of precious ancient temples, shrines, palaces and gardens, but we want to supplement it by an additional future image meant for the third millenium, an image of a modern city centering around the Seasonal Gardens under Floating Dream Bridges. The present controversy over a simple footbridge between Sanjo and Shijo could be laid to rest if the City adopted an urban strategy which simply included the renewal of all of its bridges over the Kamo River within a mangable period of time.

The creation of such new image in no way means a death-sentence to the heroic efforts the City has undertaken since the 1930's to preserve its historic treasures. Nor is it a plea for high-rise buildings in the city center.

Our proposed urban strategy would lead to a massive injection of creative energy to ultimately build a completely new architectural and urban image for the center of the City.

Since more or less all the property in the center of Kyoto is in the hands of private ownership, to execute any large-scale urban and architectural reorganization to a new urban image would be outright impossible for the City financially. But the bridges are not in private hands, nor are the river-edges. The latter two spaces could thus easily be used for the amenities and the visual renewal of the City in the Third Millenium. The City's honorable efforts to protect its past should not lead us to the slavish reproduction of it, and thus deprive us of the landmarks of the future. If you dream, dream big.

the center of the City; and to develop an example of modern environmentally friendly marriage between architecture and gardening.

As is well known, the Kamogawa is not a natural river; it is a man-made one. The metaphor we are suggesting for the design of this RIVER GARDEN, again, is clearly represented in the SYMBOL mentioned at the outset. In a way, the RIVER GARDEN is an introduction of the spirit of the surrounding virgin mountains to the center of the city. A completely new type of garden should be created here which is structurally and aesthetically closer to a natural jungle, a man-made one, than to a stylized garden, whether of Japanese, European or Chinese origin.

In a sense, only an absolutely new garden-type, reflecting the environmental and ecological plight of our age, would have the power to suggest a rebirth of the ancient Name and reality of Kyoto as Hana no miyako, A CAPITAL OF FLOWERS.