Living in a Japanese House opens the doors of 35 contemporary Japanese homes, pairing generous photography with the voices of the architects who designed them and the people who live in them.
About This Book
Japanese domestic architecture has long been a laboratory for ideas about how people might live—and this survey shows that the experiment is still running. Tokyo-based design writer Kanae Hasegawa has gathered 35 houses that range from celebrated works, among them Stairway House and House SH, to residences that appear here in English for the first time.
The selection moves across scales and temperaments: a timber tower in the city wrapped in dense wetland planting, an apartment where suspended partitions stand in for walls, and a run of other unconventional homes by some of Japan's most inventive practices. Established figures such as Hiroshi Nakamura, Ryue Nishizawa and nendo sit alongside architects less familiar outside Japan.
What sets the book apart is its attention to occupation. Each project is told through the brief and the conversation behind it—what the client wanted, how the architect answered, and what it is actually like to live with the result.
Key Features
- 35 contemporary Japanese houses, each presented as a multi-page photographic portfolio
- Texts drawing on interviews with both architects and homeowners
- Well-known projects including Stairway House and House SH
- Several residences published in English for the first time
- Work by Hiroshi Nakamura, Ryue Nishizawa, nendo and a new generation of Japanese practices
What You'll Discover
- How Japanese architects translate a client's idea of home into built form
- Inventive approaches to small sites, dense cities and blurred boundaries between inside and out
- Houses that challenge conventions—from planted towers to wall-less apartments
- Residents' own accounts of daily life in these spaces
- The breadth of contemporary Japanese residential design, from the modest to the lavish
About the Author
Kanae Hasegawa is a Tokyo-based design writer whose work examines the relationship between made objects and the environments around them. She is the author of Where They Create Japan, and her writing has appeared in publications including Frame, the Financial Times' HTSI and T Japan.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Dimensions: 250 × 290 mm
- Pages: 256
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781837292691
- Publisher: Phaidon
Perfect For: architects, interior designers and anyone drawn to Japanese houses, residential design and the question of how good design shapes everyday life.