Paper-cuts: Naoki Terada scales down Beijing in newest design project -Chinaculture.org

A scene of golden fall in Beijing. People are playing cards under a golden ginkgo tree while a street peddler sells Bingtanghulu （sugar-coated hawthrons) a typical Beijing sweet snack. [Photo by Gong Yilin/For chinadaily.com.cn]

The Japanese Cultural Center in Beijing welcomed Japanese architect Naoki Terada to the Hao Space to replicate a daily Beijing life through 1/100 miniature paper-cuts. Twenty volunteers participated in the activity under the guidance of Terada and his assistant. Participants embraced the opportunity to create an ideal scene in a Beijing's Central Business District.

Terada plans on using this trip to Beijing to collect more material for his project, "1/100 Terada Mokei", or "1/100 Terada Models" in English. The project, which includes 100 scenes of various cities, demonstrates the daily life of different cities via miniature paper-cuts. All the objects in the city scenes will be one percent the size of the originals.

Having spent half a day wandering through the streets of Beijing, Terada said he found some scenes and objects that struck a chord in him.

A participant creates a scene using model figures designed by Naoki Terada - people gather around a marriage proposal in front of a street performance. [Photo by Gong Yilin/For chinadaily.com.cn]

"I found the porcelain yogurt bottles to be very interesting. They are cute and they are everywhere in Beijing. It's on sale year-round. So I'm considering to put this in my Beijing Terada Mokei."

Terada said that he hopes his miniatures of city scenes help people recognize a city that is totally strange to them, or recall happy bits of moments of a city while they are away from them. He wants to give people a sense of what the buildings are like through the scenes.

"Creating a typical scene in a city is also a way of reflecting what the architectures are like. I mean, you don't really have to look at the buildings, you can imagine it through the people and the activities taking place around it," Terada said.

As an architect, Terada is a multiple winner of the Good Design Award in Japan. He graduated from Meiji University in Tokyo, and studied in Architectural Association School of Architecture in the UK.

A scene of the imaginative future of Beijing. [Photo by Gong Yilin/For chinadaily.com.cn]

A man is parking his bicycle by the street, and he carelessly knocked over several bicycles. [Photo by Gong Yilin/For chinadaily.com.cn]

Model figured musicians rehearse on a roof top while a rhinoceros approaches them. [Photo by Gong Yilin/For chinadaily.com.cn]

Tools needed for making a Terada Mokei: tweezers, glue and cardboard. [Photo by Gong Yilin/For chinadaily.com.cn]

A participant is creating her city scene. [Photo by Gong Yilin/For chinadaily.com.cn]

A mother and her daughter use tweezers to stick paper cutouts on the modeled architecture. [Photo by Gong Yilin/For chinadaily.com.cn]

Naoki Terada (left) receives explaination from an interpreter about a participant city scene. [Photo by Gong Yilin/For chinadaily.com.cn]

A participant (left) introduces her city scene to Naoki Terada (middle). [Photo by Gong Yilin/For chinadaily.com.cn]