In Japan, Living Large In Really Tiny Houses
The Japanese have long endured crowded cities and scarce living space, with homes so humble a scornful European official once branded them rabbit hutches.
But in recent years, Japanese architects have turned necessity into virtue, vying to design unorthodox and visually stunning houses on remarkably narrow pieces of land. In the process, they are also redefining the rules of home design.
Few Americans would consider a parking-space-sized lot as an adequate site to build a house. But in Japan, homes are rising on odd parcels of land, some as tiny as 300 square feet.
Yet the term "house" doesn't really do justice to these eye-catching architectural gems, fashioned from a high-tech palette of materials like glittering glass cubes, fiber reinforced plastic and super-thin membranes of steel.
More With Less
The need to do more with less space has sparked a boom in house designs that are as playful and witty as they are livable. One of Japan's leading designers of kyosho jutaku, or ultra-small homes, is Tokyo architect Yasuhiro Yamashita.
People tend to think of homes simply in terms of floor space. We architects think in 3-D.
"If you tried to build a normal house on a super-small plot of land, it would end up being really cramped. So in order to make the house as roomy as possible, we have to think up new structures and assembly," Yamashita says.
Ultra-small homes conserve space by dumping conventional elements like entranceways, hallways, inner walls and closets.
Windows, in a variety of shapes and sizes, are scattered across a wall, or concealed near the base. A bathroom is separated by just a curtain. Furniture can be folded into the wall, allowing a single room to serve multiple purposes.
Designers indulge in fantasy, like asymmetrical walls, cantilevered floors, or cover their houses in a translucent skin, in order to exploit all available natural light.
Yamashita built a long, skinny, cathedral-like futuristic home on a sliver of land just 40-feet wide, and named it "Lucky Drops."
Interior of "Cell Brick" micro-home. Built-in steel boxes are a whimsical yet practical answer to limited space, providing storage and, in the architect's words, "eliminating monotony" on the inside.
"'Lucky Drops' was built on an extremely long and narrow space. So light could enter only from the ceiling," Yamashita says, speaking in Japanese. "All the light comes in from the top. So the whole house becomes like a Japanese paper lantern."
The boom in quirky small homes was fueled by new design and materials technology, which have slashed the price of a custom-built home by as much as two-thirds, making these homes affordable for singles and middle-class couples.
Minoru and Aki Ota, a couple in their 30s, reside in a home that sits on fewer than 500 square feet. The walls, floors and even the kitchen table are made entirely of precast concrete.
"We weren't interested in a big house in the suburbs. We were happy to have a comfy place downtown. It's not that we wanted to live in a micro-house, but it's turned out to be plenty of room for two and convenient," Minoru Ota says.
The home features narrow windows at ground level, strategically placed to reveal bits of scenery, and flood the house with light.
Washing dishes at the counter — it's also made of concrete — Aki Ota says the house has proved warmer than they expected, but the novelty hasn't worn off four years into their residence. She says it's like living in an art museum.
Azby Brown, author of The Very Small Home: Japanese Ideas for Living Well in Limited Space, says the phenomenon's impact on Japanese popular culture has been huge.
"Where the forms of these houses is very unusual, asymmetric, seemingly unbalanced or lopsided, it's because there's a room or certain functions that need to be accommodated," Brown says. "And rather than make everything be symmetrical and line up, they just said, 'Well, if this living room is just going to have to stick out, over the parking space, so be it.'"
The real genius of ultra-compact homes is the use of visual tricks that make tiny spaces appear roomier.
Thinking 3-D
"People tend to think of homes simply in terms of floor space. We architects think in 3-D," Yamashita says. "Using all three dimensions, we can make a space look larger, and more functional. It becomes easier to devise ways of bringing in more light and air."
"It's kind of a psychological jujitsu," Brown says. "That changes your sense of perception from the things that would make you feel claustrophobic perhaps, and rather focusing on the life and the people that you're with."
Jay Shafer's entire house is just 70 square feet, and he's encouraging others to live that way, too.
Super-small luxury houses might seem counter-intuitive to most Americans, who measure their floor space in the thousands of feet, not hundreds.
But Brown, who has lectured on the subject for New York City planners, says the techniques in Japan could offer lessons on how to comfortably house residents in other teeming cities.
"We are larger people physically than the Japanese, we do tend to need more space, we're less comfortable in some sitting positions, like sitting on the floor, than most Japanese are. But I think we could also accommodate ourselves to it," Brown says.
As for the Japanese, who have updated their small-house design based on traditions such as the teahouse, they haven't just accommodated to ultra-tiny homes — they now revel in them.
For More:
Living Small: Japan's Micro-Homes
Japanese architects are building ultra-compact homes for young people with tight budgets and a taste for big city life
By Hiroko Tashiro
Japan is a land of astronomical property prices, and younger families have often had to travel an hour or more outside of Tokyo to find affordable housing. However, a group of creative architects is now catering to younger couples interested in short commutes and the amenities of big city life — and that has touched off a miniaturist trend in Japanese home design.
Ultra-compact houses, or kyo-sho-jutaku in Japanese, built on postage stamp-sized plots of land are growing in popularity. Not everyone is suited to these micro-homes, but some architects are rising to the challenge for those who are. Here's a sampling of work by architect Satoru Kurosaki and others.
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This beautiful Onigiri House was created by NKS Architects in Oita, Japan. Constructed entirely out of locally-sourced cedar, the wood-paneled wonder features a gorgeous light-laden interior that celebrates clean, simple lines and an elegant, uncluttered floor plan. Modeled after the triangular shape of one of japan's favorite delicacies, the project is the latest in NKS' line of architecture that take its cues from the purity and precision of traditional Japanese food.
Created for an old couple, the Onigiri House was designed to maximize volume and limit cost while seamlessly integrating into its environs. It's name stems from its structural reference to Onigiri, a Japanese snack made by forming rice into a triangular or oval shape and then wrapping it in nori.
The triangular tube is constructed entirely of cedar that was sustainably harvested from local sources. NKS Architects chose a type of cider wood that made the region famous for its application in shipbuilding, cutting down on the home's carbon footprint by negating material transportation costs. The interior spaces are suffused with light and well ventilated thanks to large windows located at each end, and an elevated platform protects the home from the region's occasional flooding.
http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/07/17/the-onigiri-cedar-house/
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