A House for Everyone: Architects Challenging the Post-War Myth of 'The House for The Nuclear Family' in Japan, 1954-2005
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Date
2021
Publication Type
Book Chapter
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yes
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Abstract
The design of the detached house has been the focus of architectural
developments in post-Second World War Japan. An acute
housing shortage caused by war damage, a rapid economic recovery,
a fast-growing middle class, and a government push for homeownership
created new design opportunities for architects, which
(in turn) propelled a lively debate – largely played out in architectural
magazines – as to what makes a good house. Focussed on
how architects used the design of their own houses to experiment
with new images of ‘house’ and ‘family’, this text explores two chapters
in this decades-long housing debate. It explains how the introduction
of a new constitution prompted a critical examination of
Japanese lifestyles and the promotion of reforms based on Western
ideologies. These reforms resulted in the introduction of a prototypical
two-bedroom-with-dining-kitchen floorplan (2DK) in public
housing with two divergent effects. While the housing industry
extracted from this floorplan the Western ideology of privacy and
individuality and made a private room for each family member the
rule (nLDK), individual architects favoured the observations of real
domestic life that lay at the basis of this floorplan. Two architects’
own houses will serve as case studies to illustrate architects’ continuous
efforts to propose houses for alternative lifestyles and
families beyond this new, post-war nLDK ideal: Kiyoshi Seike’s My
Home (1954) and Atelier Bow-Wow’s House & Atelier Bow-Wow
(2005).
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published
External links
Book title
Activism at Home: Architects' Dwelling between Politics, Aesthetics, and Resistance
Journal / series
Volume
Pages / Article No.
72 - 83
Publisher
Jovis
Event
Edition / version
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Date collected
Date created
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Organisational unit
09643 - Avermaete, Tom / Avermaete, Tom
02655 - Netzwerk Stadt u. Landschaft ARCH u BAUG / Network City and Landscape ARCH and BAUG