Japanese architects create some of the most popular contemporary homes, evidenced by their proliferation in blogs and magazines, and at the number of books dedicated to them. This popularity stems from bold layouts born of a number of special factors: the high price of property in cities like Tokyo (meaning little and awkward plots of property), the fact that most buildings do not survive over two decades (making customers open to experimentation via customization) and the warmth of the body as opposed to the space (resulting in windows and walls with very little insulation), among other things. These factors result in rampant investigation by younger architects on tight and frequently awkward lots in urban settings.
A new book named How to Make a Japanese House, by Cathelijne Nuijsink (NAI Publishers, 2012), targets 21 recently built Japanese houses. More than the usual presentation of drawings and photographs, the book includes interviews with the architects for each project, giving plenty of background on the specific layouts but on larger considerations of lifestyle in Japan.
Gracing the cover of this book is your O House at Kyoto, designed by Hideyuki Nakayama. Although capped with a sloping roof, the narrow, curving house is anything but ordinary. The glazed finish of this two-story house, shown through the open curtain, hints at the uniqueness of the other houses in the book. Six of the houses are featured here, such as special requests as quoted from the book that give some insight into the considerations driving each layout.
Project: Hojo
Location: Tokyo
Year built: 2009
Architects: Akira Yoneda (Architecton)
Who lives here: Yasuaki Oeda
Size: 1,000 square feet (93 square meters)
Special request: “A retreat in the midst of town and a pool to get his beloved dog.”
The way of heating from the chilly months — heating the entire body rather than the area — has repercussions for architecture, specifically that walls may be paper thin. This finds synergy with layout that must deal with warm summers, traditionally through movable walls that permit cross ventilation.
Akira Yoneda’s layout for Hojo is like a 21st-century update of a traditional Japanese house, situating a raised box with sliding walls inside a lattice-like exterior.
Yoneda calls the house “a void within the emptiness,” and that seems about perfect. No opinion of the house ever makes it appear solid. It’s like an ethereal presence conveys the space between buildings that are solid. The outer layer is created with rather standard pipe, but its articulation in bands of diverse spacing gives it an artistic appearance.
People in different countries will certainly sympathize with the customer’s desire to do something because of his dog at the house. Yet I have not seen such consideration taken this far, because the dog is essentially given nearly half of the house. This pool is your dog’s domainname, and his comfort is aided by tapping into a geothermal heating system.
Upstairs, Hojo is like a retreat as opposed to a house. Yoneda describes the job as a descendent of this sichu no sankyo heritage, which will be “a cabin with a little garden in the midst of a metropolitan context.” The architect also describes shakkei, or uttered spectacle as a consequence. From inside we could observe how the views of the surrounding buildings turned into this scene, enabled by drifting the structure from the urban emptiness.
Job: Steel House
Location: Tokyo
Year built: 2007
Architects: Kengo Kuma Architects & Associates
Who lives here: Couple and two children
Size: 2,850 sf (265 sm)
Special request:“A tearoom for tea ceremony classes and a screen space for model trains.”
Cathelijne Nuijsink’s novel is organised into four chapters, three of which present the 21 jobs (the fourth concludes the book with four thematic essays). The three chapters separate the jobs into generations: the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Kengo Kuma is part of the 1950s generation, who the writer asserts “are searching for ways to go beyond philosophical ideals” Kuma appears to be going about it at the Steel House via the use of rough, stainless steel.
Here we see the storage and screen for a few of the customer’s 10,000 (!) model trains.
While the exterior steel walls possess a deep profile and demanding appearance, the inside is smooth and unexpectedly soft. Kuma utilized translucent plastic on the inside of the steel walls, filling the gap with insulation.
The corrugated exterior walls serve a structural purpose, but nevertheless almost 30 openings are cut into them for doors and windows. Here we see four of those openings, all which were located to connect with neighbors, yet avoiding face-to-face meetings together.
Project: Rainy Sunny
Location: Tokyo
Year built: 2008
Architects: Masahiro Harada (Mount Fuji Architects)
Who lives here: A novelist
Size: 860 sf (80 sm)
Special request: “A silent, but open life.”
The first two projects illustrate fairly open exteriors, one wrapped with one and pipes cutting openings into corrugated steel walls. But this house is closer to a concrete bunker than that which many people could think of as a house. Yet this photo clearly demonstrates that the opacity is simply toward the street, and the inside is quite open.
Internal courtyards are a great amenity in areas like Tokyo, so that individuals may have a slice of sunlit outdoor space away from the public realm.
But if Mount Fuji Architects just put the courtyard on the south, it would have opened it and also the inside spaces to the street.
So they cut diagonally through the website, leaving the region at the front of the house to get a parking area, and opening up the house to the center of the block.
A double-height living space prevails, opening up to the courtyard with tall windows. The top floor is a loft that gives the writer a space to work, considering his slice of sky out the window. Yet what is most striking is just how much the steel and wood on the inside is a comparison with the scalloped concrete exterior. It is warm to the touch inside, a realm envisioned by the architects to change over time, the exterior staying the same. The herringbone patter covers the flooring, inside and out, and the walls, enveloping the client.
Project: Okurayama Apartments
Location: Okurayama, Kanagawa Prefecture
Year built: 2008
Architects: Kazuyo Sejima & Associates
Who resides: Various residents in nine apartments
Size: 5,950 sf (553 sm)
Special request: “Long lifespan, no tall construction.”
Kazuyo Sejima, one half of the Pritzker Prize-winning SANAA, is also a part of the 1950s generation, like Kengo Kuma earlier. Sejima has gone beyond contemporary ideals by taking a construction typology (apartments), usually made up of repetitive elements, and made it completely unique. The job appears like jigsaw puzzle pieces strewn throughout the website, the openings between acting as passageways between buildings. Actually it’s one assembled volume curling about the website and forming four courtyards that are connected on the ground level to act like a street through the project.
These courtyards are sculptural voids, like they were formed by the slow motion of water with time. Windows are cut into the walls to provide apartments light while maintaining privacy.
The play of light on the curved concrete walls is something that cannot be achieved with walls. These gradients therefore influence the character of the light entering the apartments.
Not surprisingly, the rooms inside are quite irregular, such as this elongated space that culminates at a window. Sejima was nevertheless considerate in laying out the apartments, providing at least two horizontal walls in each area for furniture.
Project: Moriyama House
Location: Tokyo
Year built: 2005
Architects: Office of Ryue Nishizawa
Who lives here: Mr. Moriyama and five rental units
Size: 2,830 sf (263 sm)
Ryue Nishizawa, another half SANAA (but of the 1960s production), literally jumped the program into 10 separate volumes containing six housing units. Walkways between the volumes are personal and communal places for the client as well as the tenants in the five components. There’s a certain flexibility to the remainder of these outdoor spaces, which arises from creating the volumes so small. Nishizawa did not need to overpower the small-scale circumstance with one large building, so that he went the opposite path, and forced the volumes smaller than anything around.
The outdoor spaces of this Moriyama House are suspended from the roji, or people alleyways, of this Kamata place where it’s located. While not people, these spaces of Moriyama may be utilised in a variety of ways by the renters, evidenced by these residents cooking and eating outdoors.
Nishizawa is fond of this roji, consequently his recreation of them in this project, but the traditional spaces are gradually disappearing, because they do not have any privacy. The Moriyama House offers a modern update that takes solitude into account at the design of diverse outdoor spaces.
Just 20 percent of the white-steel boxes are utilized for windows, but their large sizes — and the small size of these volumes — means that the windows have a massive impact.
Project: House at Buzen
Location: Fukuoka
Year built: 2009
Architects: Makoto Tanijiri (Suppose Design Office)
Who resides: A couple and two children
Size: 1,400 sf (130 sm)
Special Request: “A glowing house having a courtyard.”
Similar in vein to the previous examples designed by the various partners of SANAA is this single-family home from Suppose Design Office. The courtyards and paths of those multi-family jobs find another form in skylit passageways between volume-like rooms. Architect Makoto Tanijiri described this decision as one that gives each room multiple sides facing “out,” so that “each room has more quality and comfort.”
When these passageways between the six volumes aren’t totally out, the endings can be opened up to really bring the outdoors into the skylit spaces. Each volume can be shut off by the passageway for climate and solitude control.
There’s something appealing to this view from one area to another round the beachfront passageway. Back in Japan, as in many areas, people do not want to look from one house to another; they’d rather maintain their privacy than just have another window.
By internalizing the outdoors, privacy is preserved as light and atmosphere are attracted inside. These spaces might not equal backyards in different countries, however in space-starved Japan they are a few of the most precious areas possible.