The Yatai is a traditional Japanese cart. A Yatai serves to connect members of local communities, facilitate creative expression, and showcase sustainable making. It is a community pillar. We strive to inspire sustainable ideas and teach those that interact with the Yatai about the intrinsic value of reusing. By utilizing up-cycled materials, we were able to convert a rain barrel, created as an earlier prototype, into a Yatai without spending any additional money or using additional new resources. We used three old and discarded skateboard decks for the roof to give it a personalized style and continue to draw attention to the culture of reuse we are trying to create with the cart. We also tried to utilize as many of the offcuts as possible when building as well as for art pieces, drawing landscapes on the wood and even attempting to carve. When designing we most often made key decisions on the fly to help us overcome the many building problems we would encounter as we neared completion.

The primary functions of the Yatai are: a merchant or food cart, travelling tool cart or making studio, and it could serve as an organic produce cart for the produce created from our class mate’s greenhouse project. The wonderful thing about a cart is that it can be used for whatever purpose the owner intends. The Yatai embodies this notion by being easy to alter, extremely flexible in function, and easy to disassemble. As a community pillar, the Yatai serves to entice and engage. People that choose to interact should be given an opportunity to think critically about sustainability and to learn more through the offerings of the cart.

Our team gained insight into the design process through hands on making. Furthermore, our woodworking capabilities vastly improved and we learned how to make compromises during the upcycling process.