Water disappears from the stream flowing through the Roppongi Midtown Garden, yet the murmur of the stream remains together with voices of people talking about water – water to drink, to clean, to grow our food, and to produce our household goods. With its unexpected absence, we are invited to think about water and the way it permeates through our daily lives. By sharing our thoughts and questions, the connections we make between people and water start to ripple out, reshaping our future.

Japan is one of the world's leading "water-rich" countries, blessed with abundant water resources. On the other hand, many imported products consume a significant amount of water during their production processes, which can lead to Japan being considered a "water-dependent" country as it indirectly consumes a substantial amount of water from other nations. It's possible that we, as residents of Japan, don't often recognize this contradiction in our daily lives and may not view the "water scarcity" issue, which is urgently discussed worldwide, as something that directly concerns us.

The issues we must address for a sustainable future are complex and vast, requiring a reevaluation of the very structure of our systems. There is no single simple solution, and various individuals need to contemplate the issue and work together.

A small team from IDEO Tokyo was passionate about making some of our design work more visible to the public, and we were excited to participate in this sustainability-themed event.

I supported initial concept direction and research, visual language development, signage & audio experience props, and narrative messaging.

Alisa Koegel, Takumi Kitamura, Kenta Kondo, Yuriko Yamaguchi