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GA Houses Project 2003

by John McGee

Hiroshi Sambuichi, Sloping North House, Yamaguchi Prefecture, 2001-2
(Photos: John McGee)

The Japanese family unit is changing, and with it, the house. On a 290 square meter plot in central Tokyo, architect Ryue Nishizawa has designed the Moriyama House as a tiny village of Schreber gardens. Miniscule parcels of land wind between nine separate, unique structures. Inside each of the subterranean blocks and three-story towers is a different combination of kitchens, living rooms, baths and bedrooms. This disjointed “house” gives the clients, a mother and son, flexibility to live in any of the spaces, move among them, or rent one or two out as free-standing apartments. 

Some of the high-concept designs in Global Architecture’s annual showcase of the best contemporary houses reflect emerging trends like social fragmentation, urban overcrowding and environmental considerations. Others twist and fold the house into experimental forms. Japanese and Americans dominate the 62 international architects and offices represented here, with big-name favorites like Tadao Ando, Shigeru Ban, Steven Holl, Antoine Predock and others recurring from last year’s show. 

Japanese firms have produced some of the most innovative solutions, shoehorning livable space into awkward lots and seemingly unbuildable sites. Yasuhiro Yamashita and Masahiro Ikeda inserted their Lucky Drops: Skin House Project No. 7 into a needle-thin wedge in Setagaya (29m deep, 3.2m at the front, 0.7m at the back). If Jonah had lived in an eel rather than a whale, this is what it would have looked like. A hallway of metal arches covered in a thin translucent skin forms a long, narrow vault of spaces on the first floor. Light filters through expanded steel flooring into the bedrooms below. 

Sloping North House in Yamaguchi Prefecture is Hiroshi Sambuichi’s environmentally sensitive solution to an impossible site: a steep, north-facing mountainside. The underground bunker takes advantage of passive cooling in the summer and, with a roof that extends slightly above the hilltop, the warmth of winter’s low-angled sun. 

Shigeru Ban, Shutter House for a 
Photographer, Minato-ku, Tokyo, 
2000-2002 

Lab Zero forgoes the location problem entirely by making their Carapace House in Italy “site-independent.” The green metallic insect—a curved metal shipping container exoskeleton raised on the legs of three mechanical cranes—is easy to transport and requires little space. 

Peter Ebner+Franziska Ullmann’s House M in Austria is another unusual form: a single extruded loop rising in a spiral. The pitched angles of the walls in Mutsue Hayakusa’s Fold House in Chiba have more practical motivations, creating “house and furniture at the same time,” according to the architect. 

At the other end of the spectrum, several architects explore the efficiencies of simple structures. Four long, parallel sheds make Masaki Endoh and Masahiro Ikeda’s Y House in Aichi Prefecture. The partly glazed shed roof of Heikkinen-Komonen’s pre-fab Villa Havina in Huhmari, Finland, covers the whole house in an unbroken plane, letting natural light into both indoor spaces and the porch-like sunroom. And Osamu Ishiyama’s three-story greenhouse, Open Technology House #12, is covered in photovoltaic cells, generating all of its own electricity. 

Finally, two houses reflect contemporary home-as-castle security concerns. Messana O’Rorke designed their Island House as a medieval motte and bailey castle. Klein Dytham Architecture’s Stealth House is a pentagonal urban keep covered in an angled shroud of welded cor-ten steel. 

Copious illustrations and models plus bilingual explanations make this exhibition easy to understand, if time-consuming to absorb. You may not find the house of your dreams, but you’ll see what domestic dreams are becoming.

This exhibition was held Mar-Apr 2003 at GA Gallery in Sendagaya, Tokyo, Japan.

©2007 John McGee

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