全身を薬草で覆われた、ハーブマン。
彼は、自らの体に植わる薬草の効用をカフェというスタイルで人々に伝えながら旅をします。
そしてその収益は、ハーブマン基金としてプレイグラウンド制作に使われます。
人と自然が健康で、子供たちが元気に遊び回れる世界を目指して
ハーブマンは今日も旅をします。 Herbman's entire body is covered with herbs. He travels around the world, using his café to teach people the effects of the various herbs growing on his body. The proceeds from the café are used to construct playgrounds through the Herbman Fund. Herbman keeps traveling, believing in a world where people and nature are healthy, and children are happy and have enough space to play.
Medical Herbman Café Project (MHCP) is a circular, sustainable program in which we create a human-shaped herb garden named Herbman, and jointly operate a café where we sell tea and food dishes using the herbs harvested from the garden. The proceeds are used toward constructing playgrounds in the schoolyards of elementary schools in developing countries.
It is our goal to spread MHCP across the seas and to a wide range of people, and we have created a kit of all necessary materials and packed it into a sea-ready container that we take with us as we develop our project around the world. Inside the container is a Herbman construction kit, a simple kitchen, and a café unit. We unpack and assemble the Herbman and café on location. The container itself becomes the café space. When the set period for business is over, each item is once again stored in the container, and carried to the next location.
Herbman carries his trunk (the container) as he travels, bringing good health and giving dreams to children wherever he goes. This is the vision of our project.
Herbman is a person-shaped herb garden.Various herbs are planted in this garden. Herbs are planted on Herbman’s body according to their effects: for example, herbs that aid digestion are planted in the stomach area, and herbs that work to relieve shoulder stiffness are planted in the shoulder area. In this way, Herbman acts as a kind of herb dictionary.Just by looking at Herbman, people can learn which herbs work for their trouble spots.We also plant herbs that grow naturally in the locale, so that our herbs are constantly changing, and a site-specific Herbman is born in each locale.
Through Herbman, people can learn about the effects of herbs. We also build a Herbman Café nearby as a means for people to apply these effects to their own bodies.The container that carried Herbman becomes the café space, and we offer drinks and food made with the herbs harvested from Herbman.We also use this space to hold various workshops relating to herbs.
When the shop has run its course, the Herbman construction kit and café unit are once again stored in the container. And, like a caravan, we head off to our next destination. Proceeds from each café are used toward building playgrounds for children around the world.
Herbman goes through cycles as he journeys. He will meet various people in various locales, gain much knowledge, and grow into a big and strong Herbman.
EARTHSCAPE, which launched MHCP, built playgrounds between 2001 and 2003 in impoverished agrarian communities in Pakistan and Nepal with the goal of improving living and playing environments for children. These experiences provided an opportunity for us to rediscover the meaning and importance of playgrounds for growing children. At the same time, through these experiences we were exposed to the wealth of knowledge that the people of Nepal and Pakistan have toward life, and we were deeply impressed by their rationality and efficacy. One such area was their use of herbs. In addition to the more familiar examples of Chinese medicine and aromatherapy, there are truly many ways in which the effects of herbs can be channeled to the human body.
When we considered, however, how our initial series of playgrounds were made possible through donations from specific individuals, it became clear that it was not a sustainable program. We tried to think of a way to connect building playgrounds with the knowledge we gained from communities, and develop it into a sustainable program. And that was how the Medical Herbman Café Project (MCHP) was born—a series of programs with the Herbman garden, which aims to spread health among people in developed countries while providing play equipment to children developing countries, as well as the accompanying café, whose proceeds are used to build playgrounds.
M H C P
