The Moriyama house
Jan. 25th, 2006 09:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusYesterday's entry Why are Japanese houses so cold? may have left you with the impression that Japan is incapable of designing dwellings. It isn't true; in fact, Japan is home to some of the world's most interesting architects. And the buildings they make contain exactly the same quirks that perplex some of us about low-end Japanese housing. Why isn't it bigger? Why doesn't it exclude the outside better?
Take the glamorous and innovative Moriyama House in Tokyo, designed by Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA (his partnership with Kazuyo Sejima). SANAA are also responsible for the stunning new home for the New Museum being built on the Bowery in New York and the (rather less stunning) Dior store on Omote Sando.
The Moriyama "house" is in fact a cluster of ten white boxes. Although planning regulations in Tokyo are so lax that you can do just about anything regardless of the surrounding context, Nishizawa wanted to keep the big 290 square metre site in harmony with the scale of the buildings surrounding it, so instead of making one big building he made ten small ones. This also allows the owner to rent out some of the units until he's paid back his loans, at which point he'll occupy the whole complex. But already I can imagine Westerners wondering "Why do Japanese houses always have to be so small, even when they could be big?"
In his Designboom interview Moriyama says: "One of our constant big concerns is how to create a relation between the inside and outside, this is very important for us to think about." Now, this inside-outside issue also dismayed many Westerners in yesterday's comments; the fact that the temperature inside many Japanese homes is only a couple of degrees warmer than the temperature outside. The failure of Japanese dwellings, in other words, to swaddle and cocoon.
The Moriyama House deals with the inside-outside question (which is also the public-private question) by putting the bathroom outdoors. You read that right: this state-of-the-art house has an outside bathroom. To bathe, you have to walk through the open air in your bath-robe, and enter the small cube containing the bath. There's no internal way to get there. In winter you will feel cold on the way, in summer you will feel hot. What's more, it has an uncurtained glass wall. Hello stranger!
The Brutus magazine feature on the Moriyama house is a little conflicted on the public-private issue. "Rather than a walled-off kind of privacy," it quotes Nishizawa as saying, "I wanted the yard to create openness... the occupant is always aware of his or her neighbours, it's meant to be a living space where people might spontaneously get together in the yard at any moment and start a party." Nevertheless, the owner aims to expel all strangers from the site as soon as he has enough money, and his loans are paid off. So those parties will become increasingly inbred. Or, as Brutus more tactfully puts it, "The Moriyama house is a home that freely transforms between community and private residence, a process of change that the owner has the unique privilege to enjoy."
Take the glamorous and innovative Moriyama House in Tokyo, designed by Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA (his partnership with Kazuyo Sejima). SANAA are also responsible for the stunning new home for the New Museum being built on the Bowery in New York and the (rather less stunning) Dior store on Omote Sando.
The Moriyama "house" is in fact a cluster of ten white boxes. Although planning regulations in Tokyo are so lax that you can do just about anything regardless of the surrounding context, Nishizawa wanted to keep the big 290 square metre site in harmony with the scale of the buildings surrounding it, so instead of making one big building he made ten small ones. This also allows the owner to rent out some of the units until he's paid back his loans, at which point he'll occupy the whole complex. But already I can imagine Westerners wondering "Why do Japanese houses always have to be so small, even when they could be big?"
In his Designboom interview Moriyama says: "One of our constant big concerns is how to create a relation between the inside and outside, this is very important for us to think about." Now, this inside-outside issue also dismayed many Westerners in yesterday's comments; the fact that the temperature inside many Japanese homes is only a couple of degrees warmer than the temperature outside. The failure of Japanese dwellings, in other words, to swaddle and cocoon.
The Moriyama House deals with the inside-outside question (which is also the public-private question) by putting the bathroom outdoors. You read that right: this state-of-the-art house has an outside bathroom. To bathe, you have to walk through the open air in your bath-robe, and enter the small cube containing the bath. There's no internal way to get there. In winter you will feel cold on the way, in summer you will feel hot. What's more, it has an uncurtained glass wall. Hello stranger!
The Brutus magazine feature on the Moriyama house is a little conflicted on the public-private issue. "Rather than a walled-off kind of privacy," it quotes Nishizawa as saying, "I wanted the yard to create openness... the occupant is always aware of his or her neighbours, it's meant to be a living space where people might spontaneously get together in the yard at any moment and start a party." Nevertheless, the owner aims to expel all strangers from the site as soon as he has enough money, and his loans are paid off. So those parties will become increasingly inbred. Or, as Brutus more tactfully puts it, "The Moriyama house is a home that freely transforms between community and private residence, a process of change that the owner has the unique privilege to enjoy."
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 12:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 03:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 05:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 05:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 06:45 am (UTC)In other other words, it's a piece of technology that forces humans to adapt.
In yet other words, it's concept without regard for human existence.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 07:16 am (UTC)Not really; it's cunningly designed not only to help the owner pay off his debt by renting out self-contained units (and I'm sure they can easily be configured with internal bathrooms, if they aren't already), and also by being dramatic enough to appear in magazines, so that he can easily find tenants. The "iconic" can also be mega-practical, as the people of Bilbao found out when Frank Gehry made them a new museum.
In other other words, it's a piece of technology that forces humans to adapt.
Anything original forces us to adapt; without original authors, we'd no doubt all be reading bodice rippers and detective ficiton. The question is, does it make us adapt in ways that enhance or degrade our lives?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 12:40 pm (UTC)It's fine(/good) to have a "couture" of the housing world, but this isn't the sort of avant garde that's ever intended to trickle into regular circulation.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 12:51 pm (UTC)A complex rather than a single structure has a completely different relationship between inside and outside, as Nishizawa says. It reminds me of William Sheldon talking about the physiology of temerament: the big difference between ectomorphs and endomorphs is that skinny ectos (the word means literally "outside") have more of their body on the outside and fatty endos ("inside") have more on the inside. This means, paradoxically, that ectomorphs turn away from the excess stimulation, retreating into mental activity. Endomorphs, meanwhile, bubble away happily, enjoying the feeling of their guts ticking over.
The Moriyama house is "all skin and nerve", ectomorphic.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 10:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 11:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 05:54 pm (UTC)Why are Japanese houses so cool
Date: 2006-02-06 10:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 12:46 pm (UTC)Homes aren't so much showcases to show off their sense of taste and "house proudness", or a reflection of their lifestyle, but rather places to completely fall apart. If you watch any of the popular daytime TV shows here where they enter the homes of average folk, the places are usually squalid pits.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 01:21 pm (UTC)mothers house from the 18:th century on the countryside (in western europe) works exactly like that, five or six small buildings, each with a purpose that you have to walk between. The city location makes privacy an issue though, this might only work in japan and netherlands, where the dense style of living has made people give up on the privacy demands in life.
One thing I don't like is the way the architects have 'built in' or predetermined the way the house shold be used. A residence should in my opinion reflect the history and ideas of the residents. Will they only accept buyers who wants to sublet ?
/bug
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 01:45 pm (UTC)The house was built on commission, so it doesn't need to find a buyer, just some temporary letters who will help the commissioner/owner pay off the costs of construction before taking over the whole space.
Just being subjective again
Date: 2006-01-25 02:41 pm (UTC)But the final product is ugly. More boring white boxes in the landscape, that look like temporary construction site shacks. At least he could have used a more interesting choice of color. Absolutely terrible!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 02:48 pm (UTC)I might feel more positive about the house if SANAA didn't look so much like (Comme-wearing) funeral directors and I can't help but think they've missed a trick by not mounting each building on some track system so you could change their relative positions, which could lead to some exciting Tetris-style standoffs with the sub-tenants.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 02:55 pm (UTC)HIGH SCORE
Date: 2006-01-25 04:01 pm (UTC)commune
Date: 2006-01-25 10:15 pm (UTC)Idea for a movie:
Date: 2006-01-26 12:35 am (UTC)The true test of good artist.
Re: Idea for a movie:
Date: 2006-01-26 01:35 am (UTC)Re: Idea for a movie:
Date: 2006-01-26 04:24 am (UTC)Re: Idea for a movie:
Date: 2006-01-26 09:53 am (UTC)Re: Idea for a movie:
Date: 2006-11-26 04:48 pm (UTC)Re: Idea for a movie:
Date: 2006-11-26 06:49 pm (UTC)Re: Idea for a movie:
Date: 2007-08-15 05:56 pm (UTC)Do you know where is the house of Katsujo SEJIMA cold "House in a plum grove"?
It is a small house in Setagaya-ku. But precisely I don't know were.
My mail is marc.belderbos@skynet.be
Thanks a lot for a short answer.
Marc
plans and elevations
Date: 2008-03-06 07:01 pm (UTC)Radost
Re: plans and elevations
Date: 2009-10-27 10:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-14 07:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-14 12:50 pm (UTC)That said, I think the openness and vulnerability of the buildings is their greatest design asset. It's very sad if that is now considered a defect.
Didn't Moriyama say he was renting only temporarily, while he paid off construction costs? I understand he intends to occupy the whole complex eventually.