Contrast is central to the practice of architecture. The split between exterior and interior landscapes, the divide of daylight and shadow, the frontier of public and private, are defined on a day-to-day basis by architects and their design tools. For Terrain Architects, founded in Tokyo by Ikko Kobayashi and Fumi Kashimura in 2011, this contrast is felt in the geographical divide between their native Japan and Kampala, Uganda, where their most striking work has been realised. Many of the differences between Kampala and Tokyo are plain to see. Japan is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, Uganda one of the poorest. And the scale of the cities varies dramatically: Kampala has a population of under two million while Tokyo's is more than four times larger. This particular disparity, however, obscures a more pressing difference - the population of Japan is shrinking, but in Uganda it is rapidly increasing. Kampala has a growth rate of 4.03 per cent (Mexico City, in comparison, has a growth rate of 0.9 per cent and Stockholm 0.67 per cent), a rapid pace necessarily supported by the construction of informal neighbourhoods, homes and shops.
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