Zhi Japan: Home

Knowing Japan: Homes is the 14th special issue in the Knowing Japan series, edited by Su Jing with architect Shuhei Aoyama as co-editor, focusing on Japan's culture of dwelling. Taking the equation "home = family + house" as its thread, the book views housing as a community bound closely to family, daily life, and work, unfolding along three lines: history, present, and future. At the traditional end, it visits old folk houses in the Hida mountains and the gassho-zukuri farmhouses of Shirakawa-go, tracing the preservation and adaptation of wooden architecture; case studies such as the renovation of Kyoto machiya and the relocation and conservation of old buildings at the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum reveal how Japanese people regard their former homes. At the urban end, from the abandoned housing of Gunkanjima and the Dojunkai apartments to postwar danchi, and on to the Tower House, tiny houses, and One Room Mansions, it discusses how ordinary people carve out a piece of daily life in high-density cities. The book features interviews with Kengo Kuma, Sou Fujimoto, Kyoichi Tsuzuki, Yuki Kanehira, and others, and also covers Tadao Ando's Row House in Sumiyoshi, Keisuke Maeda's Nest, the Reversible Destiny Lofts Mitaka, MUJI's housing proposals, Tokyo R Real Estate, and the HOUSE VISION future housing exhibition; the closing section addresses post-disaster reconstruction and the landscape of architecture magazines. Rich on-site photographs and drawings make this special issue a set of observation notes on dwelling.