Out House

Florian Busch Architects has recently completed a house of interesting proportions; 72 feet deep by 15 feet wide, of which the client said they wanted the house to be "open" to the exterior, so that they could  breathe in the middle of the dense city of Tokyo.  The solution is an interesting play with one of the most common features of urban housing, and simultaneously offers a commentary on Japanese notions of "place".

The architects made the not unreasonable decision to open the house to the sides, which given the length of the site seems to make sense, and which helps to alleviate the tube feeling such a site might be prone to.  Whats interesting is the device used to open the sides; as you can see from the image above, on the ground floor the north wall is open, on the second floor the south wall is open, and finally on the third floor the north wall is again open, this accomplished through the use of a folded cast in place concrete plate that weaves in and out.  This plate appears to be non committal as to whether it's a floor or a wall, as the thickness is cleverly maintained in both conditions.

It's important to note the proximity of the neighboring buildings in the image above; though not touching, they are very close, and their height makes them appear to be closer than their actual distance apart might be.  From this perspective, the folded plane might be considered a "party wall"* of sorts that has taken "both sides"; separating both the south and north buildings from each other and paradoxically creating a new "place" from this separation.  As such, the house has no formal reason for being; it is a wall, an apartness that claims both sides equally, but makes no claim of its own.  In this sense too, there is no unified living in this house.  Each fold is it's own claim with no sharing.  To move from one floor to another, one bores through the folded party wall:

The house has no place; it's a machine for borrowing, borrowing space from its unwitting neighbors.  This lack of centeredness, or more accurately occupying multiple centers, is a very Japanese tendency, as noted in an earlier post (Japan Musings 6) and by Roland Barthes in his book "Empire of Signs", where he discusses the role of the train station in Japanese cities (emptying center).  The "center" in this house is nothing more than the space one is currently occupying, and entirely consistent with Shinto tradition and, for that matter, the layout of Japanese cities themselves.  One is out when in, in when out.

The section is the elevation.

Nice use of curtains to separate space uses.

The curtains seem to be just a step removed from traditional Shoji screens.  They create a soft division of the long tubular space into the necessary uses.  Their transience is latent as opposed to that implied by the translucent glazing of the "open" sides of the house.

Bedroom

Roof Deck
All Photographs © Hiroyasu Sakaguchi AtoZ

*Party wall: A fire separation between two buildings that usually extends above the roof lines of each.

Industrialized...knowing? 2.3

There is a sense that we, as creatures, must be different from all others because we have a sense of ourselves and, above all, a sense of our mortality, something we're quite sure isn't shared by any other creature.  Our existance, apart from all others on this planet, is one that collectively gathers intelligence through time, and is therefore dependant upon a level of connectivity between our members through time not required by any other.  Imagine if we all had to begin from scratch what we all have available to us upon birth, and had to invent our own crescent wrench, unicycles, pasta recipes, oil paint, cell phones on and on, we would be instead another species, one that makes due with whats available upon birth and perfectly able to do so with no penalty to its ability to survive.  We must be different.

This reasoning makes it clear we're different from all other species.  But aren't all species different from each other?  Does our difference equal superiority?  Our difference is no more than that between any of the other's, and equal in the sense that it is the means about which we go about our survival; its articulation, always on our terms, is nothing more than a distraction from the only thing life "cares" about, which is  to further itself, to extend its existence. The centeredness of our selves, and all selves, means that each is less likely to reach a complete understanding of what it means to be alive with respect to other species, and for most species this is sufficient, as their primary concern is the survival of each individual member, the extension of which ensures the propagation of the whole.  They kill what needs to be killed, and breed.  Our wondering and ponders, our endless consideration and deliberation, unique among species, leads us to places not immediately obvious as requisite of survival, but in the end, for us, completely required of it.  For it's in this consideration and pondering of options that we choose our way forward, rather than the programmed need that drives others to not look around so much, but focus on a target and measure for threats, with the immediacy of instinct.

We think we're hot shit.  Steamy risings from the meadow?  Perhaps.  But we're definitely not hot shit.  Thanks to our huge, considering brain, we claim to "know", but true knowing is precisely what we lack.  Our knowing exists outside of true knowing, but gives the appearance to us of being the only "knowing" there is.

One might say there are three states, or varieties, of "knowing": A true knowing, common to all other life forms, and probably identifiable to us as instinct; what might be called "scientific knowing", based on empiricism and causality, and as written about by Kant; and finally "belief", which is knowing only to those who believe in the belief (god) at hand.  Our being offers just two ways forward in terms of knowing, those being the last two identified above.  Our decision making apparatus doesn't permit option 1, and so we are left with only a fork in the road as to the issues and concerns we face day to day (or more precisely, present to future), without our even thinking about how this might relate to our ability to survive.  The industrial says we're fools to believe in belief, to imagine our knowing should declare us something apart from the mostly empty and cold blooded nature that is the universe.  The industrial says we have no business believing for a moment that we're any different than any of the other differences out there, and that to do so is to wander down a path of delusion, a path seeking exceptionalism for this species where none exists.  To "believe", to put your faith in the 3rd knowing, is to live a life of delusion that may have as a consequence the extinction of this species.

But what good is this knowledge if it doesn't make me feel good?  Doesn't that invalidate it?  Where is salvation?  Next.