TABLE OF CONTENTS

6 About This Book:

The Poetry of Small Houses
claudia hildner
10 The Roots of Contemporary
Japanese Residential Architecture
Ulf Meyer

CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE DWELLINGS

28 House with Gardens/Yokohama/Tetsuo Kondo Architects

32 Sakura House/Tokyo/Mount Fuji Architects Studio
36 O House/kyoto/Hideyuki Nakayama Architecture
42 Tread Machiya/Tokyo/Atelier Bow-Wow

46 Privacy and publicness

48 House in Komae/Tokyo/Go Hasegawa & associates
52 House in buzen/buzen/Suppose Design Office
56 Final Wooden House/Kumamoto/Sou Fujimoto Architects
60 a culture shaped by wood

62 Small House H/takasaki/Kumiko Inui

66 Dancing Living House/Yokohama/A.L.X. jun' ichi Sampei
70 Ring House/karuizawa/TNA takei nabeshima architects
74 Kondo House/Tokyo/Makiko Tsukada Architects
78 steps and layers

80 Rectangle of Light/sapporo/Jun Igarashi Architects

84 Tree House/Tokyo/Mount Fuji Architects Studio
88 Villa Kanousan/kimitsu/Yuusuke Karasawa Architects
94 space without space

96 Pilotis in a Forest/tsumagoi/Go Hasegawa & associates

100 House C/Chiba/Hiroshi Nakamura & NAP Architects
104 KCH/Tokyo/KoCHI ARCHITECT'S STUDIO
108 dealing with the existing fabric

110 Tsui no Sumika/Uji/Kite Architecture

114 House of Trough/Hokkaido/Jun Igarashi Architects
118 Mosaic House/Tokyo/TNA Takei Nabeshima Architects
122 Tower Machiya/tokyo/Atelier Bow-Wow

126 beauty and ephemerality

128 Moriyama House/nagoya/Suppose Design Office

134 Minimalist House/Itoman/Shinichi Ogawa & Associates
138 Atelier Bisque Doll/Osaka/UID Architects
144 the Garden as part of the Architecture

146 House Tokyo/Tokyo/A.L.X. Jun' ichi Sampei

150 House H/Tokyo/Sou Fujimoto Architects
156 appendix

About This Book:

The Poetry of Small Houses

New approaches in architecture are usually reflected first in small buildings. This
is also true in Japan, where the architectural brief of the residential building offers architects an opportunity to realize unusual concepts, to experiment with
materials and forms, and to implement new ideas for space. Observers in other
countries admire the rigor with which Japanese architects compose these small
houses: in his Final Wooden House, for example, Sou Fujimoto takes up the theme
forest, which he does not simply understand as an image but tries to embody
in the material (p. 56). Yuusuke Karasawa, by contrast, works with algorithms
and based on these strict rules creates spaces he calls ordered chaos, which
seem natural in a bizarre way (p. 88). Experiments like these often form the
basis for other designs and larger architectural tasks and hence for the evolution
of architecture in general.

The Key
to the Architecture
of
Japan
In this book the phrase small houses refers to residential architecture for private clients that is outstanding in terms of space and design.
Although there have been many publications concerned with Japanese minimal
houses, this book approaches them on a more comprehensive level: it seeks to
reveal the possibilities offered to contemporary architects by the architectural
brief of a residence and to clarify, both in an introduction on the history of architecture and in various in-depth texts, the cultural and social principles that
influence the architecture of individual residences in Japan.
The introductory essay by Ulf Meyer thus sheds light on developments in Japanese residential architecture since modernism. The author explains the residential
architecture of various eras in terms of outstanding projects built between 1940
and 2000. This subtle survey brings readers closer to contemporary projects
and gives them an opportunity to draw parallels between the present and the
past and to get to know various facets of one architectural task.
The architects whose contemporary houses are presented in the project section are for the most part members of the young avant-garde of the Japanese
architecture scene. For several of them small residences for private clients have
been the only opportunity thus far to realize their design ideas, since young
architects have a difficult time establishing themselves in the Japanese market.
The building of small houses gives them a chance to become known and to be
perceived internationally as well.

The City OF
Small
Houses
Compared to their European colleagues, Japanese architects have a somewhat easier time realizing their visions as residential buildings.
First, there are hardly any design guidelines; second, Japanese clients who hire
an architect know exactly what they are getting into. They want special houses
that stand out from the brown and green masses; hence they are prepared to
accept that the architecture will not function exclusively as a subordinate shell
but will at times even demand a symbiosis, an adaptation of living habits.
Japanese clients are more open to unconventional and daring ideas also in
part because they are not expecting a home for eternity. In contrast to Europe,
where residential buildings can as a rule be used unproblematically by several
generations, a Japanese home lasts on average only twenty-five years. The reason
for this difference is that in Japan a house is supposed to satisfy primarily the
needs of a moment and hence of a certain period of a lifetime. When the living
situation changes, it is demolished and replaced with no great qualms. The lot,
not the house, is considered the real value; that is where life plays out, where
spaces are created.
This different understanding of building was also the theme of Japans national
contribution to the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2010. In the exhibition
Tokyo Metabolizing, curated by Koh Kitayama for the Japan Foundation, satellite photographs of that city of millions were shown in rapid sequence, with the
individual lots constantly changing, revealing transformation as a fundamental
feature of Tokyo. But it is neither the public buildings nor the large apartment
blocks that are primarily responsible for this rapid change: it is the small houses,
which can simply be adapted to the changing living conditions of their owners
and hence can be seen as the liveliest and most spontaneous elements in the
urban fabric.

Design
Independence
Many of the projects presented in this book were possible only because sustainability is defined differently in Japan than it is in many
European countries. It is interpreted not so much as a function of the building as
it is a function of the inhabitants. Houses are often heated and cooled only locally
and as needed. The body and not the space is what is supposed to be brought
to a certain temperature when possible by adding or removing clothing or by
tabletop heating elements. Hence cold and heat are allowed to enter the room
and are not battled in advance but rather balanced subsequently.
This different way of thinking about sustainability in Japan can, of course, be
regarded critically as well, but anyone who looks at the effective use of energy
in Japanese homes cannot demonize it entirely. The greater tolerance of their
clients with regard to sacrifices of comfort, for example means more design
freedom for architects. They can risk more with their designs, presume shorter
life cycles, and translate their visions into architecture more or less unaltered.
The Japanese approach to architecture thus seems very free, whereas in many
European countries one observes almost the opposite phenomenon: rather than
making architecture the focus, issues of ecology or building codes become the
yardstick for designing a residence. The architect thus seems less like a creative
maker of space than like a mediator between the building authority and the energy planner.
Although the historical, social, and legal circumstances are very different,
the small houses of Japan can offer many sources of inspiration for the Western
world. The projects presented in this book whet the appetite for more residential
architecture. In the West that cannot be conceived without energy efficiency
and building codes, but perhaps it could do with a little more poetry.
Claudia Hildner

The Roots of
Contemporary Japanese
Residential Architecture

Futurist dwelling capsules: the Karuizawa vacation home

was completed by Kisho Kurokawa in 1974.

10

Buildings with innovative ideas for space and an unusual aesthetic have repeatedly caused the eyes of Western architects to turn to Japan. Particularly in residential architecture, several fascinating characteristic architectural features have
survived there that reflect the countrys traditions and social relations.
Moreover, Japanese houses have a short useful life, because adapting to new
living circumstances is not usually achieved by converting homes but rather by
tearing them down and rebuilding them. Social and economic changes and the
transformation of design preferences can therefore be read from the resulting
buildings. Anyone observing their development will thus first gain insights into
how the Japanese live and second derive an idea of the origins of contemporary
Japanese residential architecture.
This essay is thus dedicated first to the conditions on which residential architecture in Japan is based, focusing on social and urban planning factors. Then it
depicts the evolution of Japanese residential architecture from the mid-twentieth
century to the present using chronological case studies. In the process it becomes clear that residential architecture in Japan did not develop in a vacuum
but rather is based on a long tradition of small houses that only exist in this form
in the Land of the Rising Sun.

The Principles of
Japanese Residential
Architecture
In Japan most private lots are extremely small, limited,
and always more expensive than the buildings that stand on them. This has repeatedly led to unique architectural solutions, since the existing space has to
be used as efficiently as possible. But the differentness of Japanese residences
is also based on building codes intended primarily to regulate the blocking of
light in constricted Japanese metropolises, basing permissible building heights
on the width of the streets. They are also intended to protect buildings from fire

<

>

1
1.25

1.25

Restrictions on heights in the Japanese

building code:
A Area within which limits apply depending
on the width of the street.
B Area within which one- or two-story buildings
can be built (as measured from the edge of the
property) with no sloping in accordance with
regulations on the north side.
C Area within which the building can be built
(if no other rules apply).
11

and ensure that they resist earthquakes as long as possible. Hence the building
codes also determine not only the form of houses but above all urban planning:
the effects can be seen, for example, in the gullies between houses that result
from the setback requirements and in the top floors of buildings, which seem to
be cut off diagonally in order to maximize building heights while ensuring that
neighboring houses receive as much natural light as possible.
The climate is comparatively mild throughout the year in much of Japan, but
because the walls and windows of Japanese houses are poorly sealed and insulated, it can become unpleasantly hot inside during the summer and bitingly
cold in winter. Because of the way many Japanese heat and cool they regulate
the temperature of the body rather than that of the entire room the effective
energy use of houses is nevertheless relatively low, so that at least from the
government perspective there is no need to heighten regulations for the use of
energy in homes. Because this means that extensive insulation is unnecessary, the
architects have a design freedom that their Western colleagues can only envy.
Despite high population density the factor that influences Japans building culture more than any other there is still an astonishingly high number of
single-family homes in the cities. Traditionally, the large middle class in Japanese
society has placed great value on owning private land and real estate however
small it may be.

The Influence of
Urban Planning
Developments
Regulations, building traditions, and economic factors
influence the look of Japanese houses, but the most important factor is urban
planning itself: the largest Japanese cities have grown together into a single
meta-megacity in recent decades. Because Japanese metropolises are characterized by modern high-capacity train networks, and individual traffic cannot

View to the south from Tokyos northern city limit:

a tapestry of single-family homes with isolated
apartment
blocks.
12

Change in scales: the high-rises of urban centers tower

out of the agglomeration.

compete with public transportation despite numerous highways, the destructive

tendencies of suburbanization familiar from the United States and other Western
countries have done much less damage here. A culturally rich, almost continuous,
densely woven tapestry of settlements has formed, and among other things it
serves as the foundation for innovative Japanese residential architecture. The
lack of context is the only context in which residential buildings are designed.
The fragmentary essence of Japanese metropolises has often been described as
a patchwork, because of its as Botond Bognar has put it radical heterogeneity. The architect cannot but add to the restless image of the city. (Bognar
Botond 1990, p. 14) Whereas in most countries the relationship to the surrounding landscape is marked by single-family homes, in Japan it is the omnipresent
city, a manmade landscape that can be called an urbanscape.
The visual chaos of these constantly changing metropolises usually offers
few points of reference for housing, but on the other hand it frees architecture
of the obligation to adapt to or even subordinate itself to its urban context. Every building stands alone; the urban juxtaposition sometimes seems confused
and arbitrary to Western eyes. Because of the rapid sequence of building and
demolition that is typical in Japan, it makes little sense for architects to relate
their work to a neighboring building. Many architects thus choose a defensive
strategy and cut the building off from the context of the city. Experience with
recurring natural catastrophes, wars, and not least the explosive growth of cities has left little room for sentimentality in the design of Japanese cities. They
do not build for eternity: on average, residential buildings are demolished and
rebuilt after just twenty-five years. A situation that might seem at first glance to
run counter to the development of an architectural culture in fact has deep cultural roots in Japan. The lack of tradition has a long tradition where the physical
constitution of buildings is concerned. Originally, houses in Japan were created
from ephemeral materials and were repeatedly demolished and replaced only
a buildings form, never its material, could be preserved for centuries.

House in a Tokyo suburb ready for demolition.

13

Anyone who studies Japanese urban planning will recognize the changing of individual elements as an essential quality of these metropolises. Whereas European
cities are characterized by their permanence, Japanese cities are characterized
by transformation, by the dynamic. Changes in social or economic circumstances
can be manifested architecturally and urbanistically in Japanese metropolises
within a quarter century, whereas in cities like Paris it is barely possible to detect
a change in the cityscape over that period. The Japanese city counters the lack of
monumentality and permanence with its omnipresence as its strength. In contrast
to the Western, European view of urban planning, in which one building relates
to the next, and the body of a city emerges only within a context, Japans cities
celebrate chaos, energy, and constant renewal. That does not mean that urban
planning considerations are fundamentally bracketed out in Japan, but rather
that such metropolises often require different solutions than a Western city does.

Japanese Architecture
until the Second World War
Until the twentieth century, the
majority of Japanese residential buildings were characterized by a traditional
modular wood-frame construction that obtained its genuinely Japanese form from
fusuma (sliding doors), tatami (straw mats), and sho
ji (sliding panels made of rice
paper). Houses in Japan were designed for large families, and their floor plans
were based on a planar, modular system of rooms and corridors with a straw or
tile roof above and a wooden platform below. The proportions and dimensions
of the room were based on the module of a tatami (which today measures about
80 by 182 centimeters but varies slightly from region to region and even then
has been adjusted repeatedly over time) and the construction grid of the wood
frame, which is filled in with both permanent and moving, nonbearing walls. The
floor plans of Japanese houses have not traditionally been determined by function
but are rather flexible in use, and thanks to their sliding walls they can easily be

The interpenetration of housing and the experience

of nature: the Villa Katsura in Kyoto.
14

View into one of the teahouses of the Villa Katsura:

the proportions of tatami mats and sliding elements
characterize the traditional architecture of Japan.

combined into larger units. Futons were rolled up and stored in closets during
the day; so there were neither beds nor chairs nor tall tables. Clean (bath) and
dirty (toilet) were separated spatially.
Until the devastating Kanto
earthquake of 1923, even large cities like Tokyo consisted largely of low-rise, traditional wooden houses. The fires after the
earthquake thus caused worse damage than the vibration of the earth itself: the
catastrophe made painfully clear the limitations of wood construction for the
modern Japanese metropolis. Even the brick buildings of the Ginza District that
had been built in the Western style proved not to be sufficiently earthquake-safe,
so that reinforced concrete was increasingly used in the years that followed.
At the same time, traditional Japanese architecture was receiving more attention
in the West: it began with Franz Adolf Wilhelm Baltzers Das japanische Wohnhaus
of 1903 and reached a climax with the texts Bruno Taut wrote between 1933 and
1936, in which the Villa Katsura in Kyoto in particular was assessed as an outstanding example of Japanese architecture. Walter Gropius also recognized that
traditional Japanese architecture offered solutions to the architectural issues of
his day. It is thus not surprising that his Sommerfeld House in Berlin of 1921 has
similarities with the Sho
so
in wood house in Nara from the eighth century.
While the West was discovering traditional Japanese architecture, the Japanese
were fascinated by the Modern Movement and tried to keep up with its Western
advocates. Iwao Yamawaki (18981987) was one of four Japanese students at the
Bauhaus in Dessau, and the only architect among them. After returning to Japan,
he built a residence and studio in Tokyo in 1933 that reflects the principles of
Bauhaus modernism. The intercontinental exchange of ideas was fruitful for the
evolution of a modern Japanese residential architecture, as is also demonstrated
by the example of the house that Kunio Maekawa built for himself.

Walter Gropiuss Sommerfeld House in Berlin (right) reveals echoes

of the Sho
so
in wooden house in Nara.
15

case study 4. Toyo ito,

white U, 1976
In 1976 Ito built this house for his older sister, whose husband
had recently died of cancer. She wanted a house in which their two daughters
would have more direct contact to earth and sky. Over the course of designing it,
functional considerations took a backseat to symbolic ones. The exposed-concrete
building was shaped like a U whose ends are joined by a straight line. Thus it resulted in both a protected courtyard and an infinite space. The long corridor led
to the childrens rooms and the mothers bedroom. White walls and a white floor
formed a universal space for playing, eating, and meditating. Light and shadow
from a skylight covered these surfaces like a canvas. The demolition of the house,
which took place before Itos eyes in 1997, was regarded by the family as a liberation from the task of mourning.
Whereas in the 1970s houses were often still
designed like a heterogeneous internalized city,
the beginning of the new wave in the 1980s introduced a radical reversal in thinking: architects
abandoned the attempt to view the city as something to be designed and instead pursued an introverted architecture that related to the city in a
defensive way and sought hermetic separation. This
period was the heyday of the exposed-concrete
architecture of strict primary geometry of the sort
that Tadao Ando
made world famous.

Plan of ground floor

22

,
case study 5. Tadao ando
Sumiyoshi Nagaya, 1976
Tadao Ando
took a traditional building type as
his point of reference for his design of the Sumiyoshi Nagaya: the nagaya. It is a
kind of row house that was particularly common in the Edo period (16031867)
and housed the majority of the citys population.
Ando
s slender exposed-concrete building stands on a lot 14 meters deep but
just 3.5 meters wide. A small incision in the otherwise completely closed-off,
six-meter-tall street facade of exposed concrete serves as the entrance. Only
after passing through it is it clear that the house is organized around an open
courtyard that extends the full width of the lot. Residents have to pass through
this courtyard to reach the back spaces from the front ones. The design has
entered the history books as a symbol of the radically introverted residential
architecture in Japan of this period. Ando
s architecture was both antiurban and
antihedonistic. The turn away from the hostile, overpowering, constantly transforming city resulted in many inward-turned spaces.

Plans of ground floor and second floor, section

23

36

O house
Kyoto

Hideyuki
Nakayama
architecture

2009

live-in
cathedral

Is it a church, a cut-open
house, or a live-in sculpture with a display window?
O House in Kyoto surprises viewers with its eccentric form: a tall volume twists defiantly into the
sky, while the two side aisles duck away modestly.
On the front side, a full-height glass facade is all
that separates the interior from the exterior. When
necessary, a curtain can keep curious passersby
from looking in.
The architect Hideyuki Nakayama arranged living
spaces and outdoor areas around the central volume
on the ground floor. They are in turn surrounded by
a hip-height concrete wall that can be read as an

exterior wall or as a garden wall. From the outside,

the central nave is perceived as the most important
part of the house, but the floor plan reveals that
it houses two completely different uses. On the
ground floor it serves primarily to provide access,
whereas on the upper floor it accommodates the
bedrooms for the family of four.
The occupants enter the house via the central
volume, which leads them into the side wings
with the live-in kitchen and bathroom or into the
outdoor area. They reach the upper floor via the
kitchen, from which an S-shaped spiral staircase
leads back into the central nave. According to
37

38

Nakayama, this path makes the occupants climb

into the bedrooms not simply a walk into another
space. It is, he says, rather like coming home after
a long day.
Life inside the house and its external appearance
do not correspond and can scarcely be interpreted
as a unity. Thanks to the glass facade, however,
there is a direct connection between outside and
inside: it transforms the quirky building into a kind
of stage, complete with curtain. As long as the latter
is open, passersby can follow parts of the familys
life, experiencing a presentation of living in the
city. For the residents, by contrast, the changing
exterior space becomes part of their home. When
the curtain is closed, the perception of the house
changes, both for its viewers and for its users.
The structure of O House contains allusions to the
history of architecture: first, the curving main
house recalls somewhat White U by Toyo Ito (see
p. 22), which has already been demolished; second, the composition of tall middle house and low
side buildings admits of purely superficial associations with a typical two-story residence of the Edo
period (16031867).

1 . Cross section
2. Longitudinal section
3. First floor plan
4. Ground floor plan
Scale 1:250
39

40

56

final wooden
house
sou fujimoto
architects

kumamoto
2008

innovatively
primitive
In this experimental house in
Kumamoto in southern Japan, the constructions,
facade, and interior are all made of wood. Its architect, Sou Fujimoto, thus calls the building, located
in the garden of a private client on a lot measuring
4.20 by 4.20 meters, Final Wooden House.
Building an all-wood house appealed to the Tokyo
architect for several reasons. First, the material
dominated Japanese architecture for centuries
and had a great influence on the evolution of the
countrys architecture. Second, there was its naturalness, which predestined it to shape the primitive
architecture Fujimoto sought. Finally, the architect

was fascinated by the diversity of the material,

which in one building can fulfill every conceivable
function from dressing by way of construction
and insulation to interior finishing. With his Final
Wooden House, he pushed the multifunctionality
of wood to its limits by assigning nearly all the
tasks to a single element: thirty-five-centimeterthick square cedar beams. The viewer notices in
passing that this is a living, growing material simply
from its growth rings.
Staggering the arrangement of the solid wood
beams results in steps whose heights are multiples of the basic unit of thirty-five centimeters
57

58

 1 . Top view
2. Section
Scale 1:100

and are thus harmonized with human dimensions.

One element is suitable for seating furniture; two
correspond to the height of a desk; three make
it possible to work standing up. In essence, this
is a house without furniture, which only became
common in the living areas of Japanese homes
from the time of the Meiji Restoration (from 1868
onward) and the associated adoption of Western
styles of housing and living.
The walls and levels of Final Wooden House cannot
be easily read; in fact, the space and the material
that delimits space closely dovetail as positive
and negative forms. In his book Primitive Future,
Sou Fujimoto writes of this project: Before matter
and space separated, there was an unfathomable
potential concealed in the unequivocally undiffer-

entiated state [] when the stacked timbers and

interstitial spaces become equivalent, ambiguities
blur the distinction between the space produced
by mass and the mass produced by space 1 .
This quotation reflects what the architect means
by primitive: not an imitation of earlier building
techniques but rather an attempt to understand
space and architecture in a very primal sense, to
question the means available to architecture, employing them in such a way that the result makes
a general statement about building. With his Final
Wooden House, the architect created a house that
is also an experiment with space: a small universe
that offers people spaces and areas to use but not
instructions for their use.
1 Fujimoto, Sou: Primitive Future. Tokyo, 2008, p.119.

59

74

Makiko Tsukada
Architects

tokyo

2008

Kondo
House
hanging
Gardens

How can light be brought

into a house that is constricted on three sides by
neighboring buildings and faces a loud street on
its fourth side? The Tokyo-based architect Makiko Tsukada solved that problem by largely closing
off Kondo House from its surroundings, letting
light flow into the house from above via patios and
staggered levels.
The architect used a combination of two pairs of
steel frames, from which the residential floors,
the outer walls, and two patios were fastened or

suspended. This made it possible to dispense with

supports in the interior, so that the floors almost
seem to float. This impression is reinforced by a
ribbon window just above the floor, which makes
the wall surfaces above it seem light as a feather.
On the ground floor of the house Tsukada designed
for a husband-and-wife team of graphic designers, their one-year-old child, and the husbands
father, she placed a live-in kitchen, a living room
closed off on three sides, and the grandfathers
living quarters. One of the patios extends the full

75

76

height of the building and serves as a small interior

garden between the grandfathers rooms and the
clients living area.
Two staircases lead from the kitchen to the upper
floor. Arranged on three staggered levels are the
familys bedrooms, a workspace, and a play space
for the child. Between the work and play areas is a
second, slightly narrower patio, so that the upper
story is articulated by two glass boxes as well as
the shifts in level. Makiko Tsukada tries to design
her houses in such a way that the occupants can
use them in several ways: for example, the two

staircases permit a playful circular tour through

the house. The open living space should not be
understood as an obligation either: the rooms
can be separated by shoji the traditional sliding
doors covered with rice paper which provides a
little private sphere.
It is in keeping with Tsukadas concept that the
facade has dark plaster and gives few hints of its
spectacular interior. Shielding against unwanted
influence seems to be more important to the family
than exposing to the outside the exciting world in
which they dwell.

2
1

1 . Ground floor plan

2. First floor plan
3. Longitudinal section
Scale 1:250

77

In the Western architectural tradition,

a building is primarily framed by means
of walls and windows. []
On the other hand, in the traditional
Japanese architecture, horizontal planes
(that is, the floor and the ceiling)
are the dominant framing devices. 1
Kengo Kuma

1 Hyatt, Peter and Hyatt, Jennifer: Designing with

Glass: Great Glass Buildings. 50 modern classics.
Mulgrave, Victoria, 2004, p.18.
2 Hirai, Kiyoshi: The Japanese House Then and Now.
Tokyo, 1998, p.41.
3 Casa Brutus, special issue Traditional Japanese
Architecture and Design (part 1), 4/2008, p. 71.
78

steps and layers

Flooring is first found in Japan in antiquity. It

came in the form of slightly raised plank floors
in the living room that cause the living area to
stand out as a result, distinct from the height of
the surrounding floors. Previously, the Japanese
lived almost exclusively on rammed earth; floors
of this kind continued to be used for dirty areas
of the house, but the living spaces of wealthier
families were increasingly dominated by plank
floors. In essence, this floor served as universal
furniture, supplemented by mobile tatami mats
on which to sit and lie down more comfortably.
Beginning around AD 1200, there were more
and more residential buildings in which tatami
mats were installed permanently. 2 The nature and
height of the floor not only revealed the function
of the room within the house but also suggested
how formal the given area was and indicated the
rank of those sitting on it. This was particularly
clear in medieval Japan: in the reception rooms
of residences of warriors, the heights of the floors
indicated where those of different military ranks
were supposed to sit in relation to one another.
In prestigious residences, other parts of the building indicated the formality of the room and the
corresponding level of etiquette. In essence, there
were three different levels of formality: shin (very
formal), gyo
(formal), and so
(informal). This was
conveyed, for example, by means of the borders
of tatami mats, the design of walls and ceilings,
and wood of different types and manner of installation. 3 These means of formal expression were
available to the nobility and the warrior class the
lower classes were not permitted to use them.
Whereas craftspeople and farmers could only
design their homes in simple ways in any case,
in order to maintain the traditional hierarchy of
the estates the merchants who grew wealthy in
the eighteenth century were forbidden to use the
insignias of the upper classes.
In addition to functioning as an indicator of social
status and as all-purpose furniture, the floor is

very important spatially, as Kengo Kuma explains.

In the traditional Japanese house it was one of the
few immovable elements, along with the ceilings
and wooden supports. Because there were only
light sliding doors and few solid interior walls, the
floor and ceiling shaped the space through which
daily life flowed (see also p. 94).
Western influences on Japanese housing only began to increase with the Meiji Restoration from
1868 onward, but even then only one or at most
two rooms of a house would be furnished according to Western ideas or, more accurately, by the
notions the Japanese had of how people lived in
the West. One crucial change, however, was the
introduction of furniture for sitting and reclining,
which deprived the floor of its universal tasks in
the living areas.
In many Japanese homes, the traditional functions of the floor still play an important role. For
example, the genkan, or ground-level entrance
where street shoes are removed, has been retained in many cases. It is, however, no longer
distinguished by an earthen floor but usually has
an easily cleaned plastic or stone floor covering.
The elevated areas often feature imitation parquet
rather than real wood, and the living rooms and
bedrooms in many houses still have tatami mats
on which low tables sit during the day and futons
are rolled out at night to sleep.
The floor in a Japanese home thus still conveys
information about how certain areas are used,
intended to offer signals about how to interact
with the space, and shows by means of steps and
differences in floor covering where shoes are permitted, where to use slippers instead, and also
when the latter should be removed again.
In architecturally ambitious homes today, however, many architects dispense with these eloquent elements from the past or reinterpret them
in favor of a stronger concept of space (see, for
example, Kondo House by Makiko Tsukada [p. 74]
or Tree House by Mount Fuji Architects [p. 84]).

79

122

atelier bow-wow

tokyo

tower
machiya
Vertical
Tea
garden

The plot was the size of a

parking space, but the clients nevertheless wanted
to build their dream house there. Atelier Bow-Wow
met this challenge in Tokyos Shinjuku district
with another machiya (see also Tread Machiya, p.
42), this time in the form of a tower. The stairwell
replaces the corridor of the traditionally one- or
two-story machiya and snakes like a garden path
through the four slightly staggered floors. On the
second level the architects even added a kind of
bench. As in a typical Japanese tea garden, the
end point and climax of the path is a teahouse,

2010

or in this case a tearoom. Both clients are well

versed in the Japanese tea ceremony, and would
like someday to instruct students in this room.
Visitors enter Tower Machiya on the southeast side
and via a narrow entry area enter directly into the
elevated live-in kitchen. Via a white filigreed steel
stairwell, which stands out clearly against the
parquet floor, they begin the climb to the upper
floors. The individual rooms are articulated around
the stairwell like stations on the edge of the path.
The building makes no secret of the steel construction that supports it: crossovers and rough

123

124

EG
ground floor

1.OG
first floor

2. OG
second floor

longitudinal section - Lngsschnitt

cross section - Querschnitt

3. OG / Dachgeschoss
third floor

cladding remain visible. The architects combined

this open and clear structure with modern glass
elements, traditional Japanese sliding doors, and
tatami mats, resulting in a contemporary and yet
thoroughly Japanese house.
scale
1:250
That is also reflected
in the
exterior view of Tower
Machiya: the entrance area is characterized by
traditional sliding doors of thin wooden slats; the
upper stories are dominated by the steel construction and narrow balconies.
Tower Machiya is an example of the extreme verticality that now dominates Japans urban structures,
which were originally so horizontal. Rather than
low buildings that develop into the depths of the
plot, there are rather multistory point-block residential buildings. With this design, however, Atelier
Bow-Wow demonstrates that a vertically arranged
house need not contradict the original living style
of the Japanese city but can instead build on it.

1 . Ground floor plan

2. First floor plan
3. Second floor plan
4. Third floor plan/attic
5. Longitudinal section
6. Cross section
Scale 1:250
125

Looking over the bay,

spring blossoms and autumn leaves
are as nothing
Compared to those grass-thatched huts
in the autumn twilight. 1

1
Fujiwara Sadaie

(11621241)

1 Blyth, R. H.: Haiku, vol. 3. Summer-Autumn. Tokyo,

1986, p.900.
2 Japan Illustrated Encyclopedia: Keys to the Japanese
Heart and Soul. Tokyo, 2008 (19th ed.), p.29.
3 Ibid., p.31.
126

beauty and ephemerality

That the Japanese cultivate a special relationship

to fleeting moments is reflected in the attention
they pay to seasonal events such as the blooming
and fading of various sorts of flowers or to the
fall colors of leaves. In the case of cherry blossoms in particular, mankai that is, the day on
which the blossoms have opened completely and
remain visible only for a brief time is feverishly
anticipated. It is about perfect beauty, on the one
hand, but also, on the other hand, about the fact
such beauty cannot be captured: perfection is
not a state that endures.
The Japanese call the aesthetic principle behind
this mono no aware: a deep, empathetic appreciation of the ephemeral beauty manifest in nature
and human life 2 . This motif first occurs in writings of the Heian period around AD 1000 and
plays an important role in the literature of later
centuries as well.
To understand mono no aware, it is important
to understand mujo
the Buddhist doctrine of
ephemerality, according to which everything
that is born must die and [] nothing remains unchanged3. Because Buddhism began influencing
Japanese culture as early as AD 700, it is reasonable to assume that mono no aware evolved in part
based on engagement with the doctrine of mujo
.
With the refinement of the tea ceremony and developments in poetry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, two other aesthetic principles
gained in importance: wabi and sabi. Whereas
the former goes back to the tea master Sen no
Rikyo
(152291) and primarily praises the austere
beauty of the simple life relieved of worldly cares,
the latter is closely associated with the poet Basho

(164494) and is found even beyond poetry

where the ephemerality and imperfection of life
are expressed in the form of a patina or slight
defects. Both principles are sometimes juxtaposed with perfect beauty of cherry blossoms,

for example so that the contrast will reinforce

the intended image of wabi or sabi.
In the teahouses, the principles of wabi and sabi were transferred to architecture: on the one
hand, they influenced the architecture of shoin,
a very formal type of building that evolved from
the medieval residences of warriors. In addition,
they gave impetus to the development of a more
informal type of house: the sukiya, which is now
considered the model of traditional Japanese residential architecture (the most famous example
is the Villa Katsura in Kyoto; see p. 14). This traditional aesthetic is reflected in contemporary
architecture as well, as in the simple beauty of the
construction of Tower Machiya by Atelier BowWow (p. 122).
Although mono no aware and sabi had no direct
influence on architecture, they do have a mutual
relationship to it: the living material of wood,
which dominated Japanese architecture into the
twentieth century, ages in a clearly visible way;
historical roof constructions of rice straw or bark
must be replaced regularly; and sensitive materials with short life spans, such as tatami and shoji
(sliding doors of rice paper) characterize many
houses even today.
In the case of sho
ji, moreover, space itself becomes ephemeral, since the floor plans can be
changed in accordance with current needs. This
flexible subdivision of space makes sense even
today, since the often relatively small houses can
quickly react to new requirements (see, for example, Kondo House by Makiko Tsukada, p. 74).
In contemporary architecture, the shoji are sometimes replaced by curtains.
The approach to light and relationships to the
garden or the changing seasons often reflects
architects desire to provide a place in architecture
for the ephemeral or to think of the building not
just spatially but also temporally.

127

150

Sou Fujimoto
Architects

house h
tokyo

from branch to
branch

Sou Fujimoto modeled his design for House H in Tokyo on the structure of a young
tree; the building is like a shoot that is constantly branching out as it spreads upward. The Tokyobased architect worked with separate levels, each
of which serves a specific use, and with steps that
either connect two levels or represent their own
spatial unit. The house almost completely fills the
lot in lieu of a garden, Fujimoto created interesting spatial transitions that make the interior of the
building seem like a unity.
Via the carport one arrives at the entry to the house,
from which a massive staircase leads into the living

2009

space. From there a wooden staircase provides

access to the kitchen. Additional steps lead to the
living room and finally the bedroom. Up to this point
the steps lead upward in a spiral, but now one can
choose whether to continue climbing upward or
enter the nursery. There awaits one of the aimless
staircases, placed over an opening in the ceiling,
providing a place for their small daughter to play.
From the parents bedroom one can continue up,
again with two options to choose from: the path to
the roof terraces or that to the bathroom.
The individual rooms are connected to one another via large-format openings in walls and ceil151

152

 1 . Cross section
2. Third floor plan
3. Second floor plan
4. First floor plan
5. Ground floor plan
Scale 1:250

Level 3 + Dach

ings, so that the family members remain in contact across several floors or can at least sense the
presence of the others. The numerous connections
make the interior seem almost continuous. This
vertically conceived landscape would probably
Level 2-3
function best without any exterior walls, but its
use as a residence and its location in a densely
populated Tokyo neighborhood argued rather
for a closed solution. An exposed concrete shell
with large openings is wrapped around the living
areas and also surrounds the roof terraces and
the carport.
Whereas the interior with its many steps somewhat
recalls a narrow and winding ruin or a work by the
Level 1-2 artist M. C. Escher, the house presents itself to
the outside as ordered and restrained. The large
windows, whose panes are fixed in the jambs at a
slight angle, frame the exterior space. Views inward
and outward connect the private and the public
areas, so that the exterior space and street scenes
can flow into the familys everyday life.

Level 1

153