The Japanese House

3 units

This seminar examines the Japanese House as a modernist idea as it evolved over the course of the 20th century, both within Japan and internationally. The single-family, tofu-cutter house came to define Japan's suburban, industrialized landscape in the postwar era, but the type historically emerged out of a certain modernist imagination of Japan's pre-modern architecture, as architects and critics such as Bruno Taut and Arthur Drexler projected their specific readings of shoin and minka architecture onto a mandate for contemporary practice. The seminar will investigate major strains of domestic architectural design in postwar Japan, paying particular attention to the formalist exercises of Shinohara Kazuo and technology-driven designs of Ikebe Kiyoshi. More contemporary pursuits by SANAA and Atelier Bow-Wow in materiality, transparency, smallness, and urban complexities will also be covered. This course satisfies the History/Theory elective requirement.