Professor of Architecture Andre Viljoen is one of four urban agriculture experts travelling to Tokyo this week ahead of the Olympic Games in 2020.

Andre Viljoen, Professor of Architecture, was invited by the Mayor of Nerima City in the Japanese capital to meet city planners and academics from the University of Tokyo and conduct field work in preparation for the Tokyo World Urban Agriculture Summit in 2019, part of the city’s build-up to hosting the Olympics.

Andre will be focusing on ways in which urban agriculture can be further integrated into Nerima City. The four-day trip is organised and funded by the Mayor of Nerima City under the guidance of Professor Makoto Yokohari from the University of Tokyo’s Department of Urban Engineering.

The field work that Andre will carry out in Tokyo will form part of his joint project with Katrin Bohn, Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton, entitled ‘Laboratories of Urban Agriculture’. The project started in the early 2000s in Cuba and continued in 2012 in the USA.

Andre said: “This invitation by Nerima’s Mayor and colleagues from Tokyo University enables Katrin and I to continue presenting our concepts for integrating urban agriculture into cities while also having our ideas challenged in different contexts. It is both an honour and a pleasure to be invited to contribute our research findings to help shape plans for the 2019 World Urban Agriculture Summit.”

In 2015 Andre and Katrin were awarded the prestigious Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Award for Outstanding University Located Research for their work on Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes.

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