Small generalizable dwellings like the Levittown bungalow made famous in the United States, make creative use of simple organizations that serve inhabitants’ most basic needs in an affordable and productive fashion. Small houses respond to vital needs that have been interpreted since ancient times to include four basic components: protective roof, dry earthworks, clear demarcation of space, and a distinction between common and private areas for cooking, socializing, and sleeping. No architectural prototypes celebrate these inspiring principles of dwelling construction quite like Japanese traditional dwellings with their deep overhangs, vented crawlspaces, and modular structural grids based on centuries of links to territory, climate and reoccurring seismic activity.
Japanese modularity and a strong bond to locus inspired modern architects to reproduce these values in their prospective proposals for original housing patterns. Frank Lloyd Wright and Antonin Raymond are just two iconic architects whose designs include core Japanese analyses to generate creative arrangements. Specific to both figures, the horizontal link to place was deployed by a strict planning grid and based on the tatami proportions in the case of many of Antonin Raymond’s designs.
A beautiful manifesto of traditional dwelling tenets was disassembled, transported and set on Vitra’s Museum campus in Weil am Rhein in Germany to save the architectural prototype from demolition (https://www.vitra.com/en-gb/about-vitra/campus/vitra-design-museum). The Umbrella House designed by architect Kazuo Shinohara in 1960, was articulated to field studies of domestic architecture examining and extracting configurations from urban, village and countryside case studies.
Transported from Japan in an ISO shipping container as a kit-of-parts, the streamlined disassembly and reassembly by a few master carpenters is a testament to the traditional crafting infused in this 1961 design and elucidates the potential for Japanese domestic practices to be as effective today. The total 10m x 10m footprint is composed by radiating rafters from the center of the 7.5m x 7.5m square plan. A master class of organization, the plan is divided into two equal 3,75m x 7,5 m rectangles, one for cooking and eating and the other includes an elevated tatami room for sleeping and dressing.
Umbrella House; Japanese small dwelling patterns
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