finding niwa: semi-public open space in contemporary Japanese housing

Many architects in Tokyo today are responding to a yearning for a sense of connectedness such as that afforded by the streetscapes of the interwar and post-war Japanese city; spaces that facilitate incidental and informal encounters and that contribute to a sense of being part of the collective organisation of the city. This longing for connectivity with each other and with the city, which was heightened by the bereft experience of COVID, is evident in the appearance of open semi-public spaces in recent architect designed housing projects in Tokyo. Their appearance marks a shift away from the long-standing fascination in Japanese architecture with the autonomous architect-designed house, a fascination that has been traced by scholars to Kazuo Shinohara,1 who in an article in 1964 encouraged architects to consider the ‘small’ house as an ‘art-form’ and ‘to ignore the city in favour of creating inner utopias’ for individuals and nuclear family units.2 The legacy of such an approach, an urban landscape delivering isolation and disconnection, is being addressed by the current generation of architects who are concerned with the urban condition and who are incorporating a variety of interstitial spaces in housing projects for people who choose to live together. For insight into spaces delivering connectivity these architects have looked no further than the urban morphology of Tokyo itself, a city of predominantly individual dwellings on increasingly smaller allotments.3
The open semi-public spaces they have created became the focus of my Dunbar study.