The Deborah J. Norden Fund 2013

“Tokyo’s Pantry: Tsukiji and the Commodification of Market Culture”

In 2013, the Architectural League awarded one grant to Alice Colverd and Alexander McLean, who mapped and studied Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market, which was recently slated for relocation in preparation for the city’s bid for the Olympic games. Their project documented the flows of goods in and spatial organization of the market in its surrounding neighborhood, highlighting “broader shifts in the place of food in the city and the role and relevance of face-to-face exchange.”

Alice Colverd lived in Tokyo until the age of twelve. She received her undergraduate degree in Architecture from the University of Cambridge in 2010, where she was awarded the RIBA Eastern Region Prize. She has since worked at Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / S A N A A in Tokyo, and at Feilden Fowles and 6a architects in London. She received the Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship in 2012 and is currently pursuing her architectural education at The Cooper Union in New York.

Alexander McLean was born in London and completed his undergraduate degree in Architecture at the University of Cambridge. In London he joined 6a architects, and formed part of the design collective Assemble, constructing self-built public projects around the city. Undergraduate research into the role of traditional religious festivals in the Japanese urban environment brought him to Kyoto, Osaka, and Niigata in 2009. Alexander has since moved to New York to complete his architectural training at The Cooper Union.