| | | PAST
ISSUES | |
INTERIORS ARCHIVE:
529: Trend spotting
Trina O'Hara takes us on a tour of international furniture fairs to find
the top Japanese designers at work today.
521: Child's play
Trina O'Hara checks out the design celebrities hatching playful furniture
and accessories for kids.
517: Personal Effects
In celebration of the centennial of his birth, Trina O'Hara looks at the
life and enduring legacy of Japanese-American designer Isamu Noguchi.
513: Seeing the light
Trina O'Hara ponders the latest interior design trend and finds the answer
is clear.
505: Lights of fancy
Trina O'Hara checks out the contemporary chandeliers and whimsical lighting
sculptures fast becoming fine art across the city.
501: Natural causes
493: Living rooms
Inspired by the diverse lifestyles of this teeming metropolis, design experts
Kyoko Asakura and Jaume J. Nasple-Baulenas have compiled an intriguing look
inside the city's private homes. Tama Miyake Lung talks to the authors of Tokyo
Houses.
489: Living in the past
Art editor John McGee reveals three Tokyo stores that specialize in finding
the best of what's old in Japanese antiques.
485: Monochrome marvels
Black and white are back in fashion and making their mark in the interior
design scene. Martin Webb reports on how to get the look for less.
481: Cut and paste
Scrapbooking has swept America, where it's big business, and now it's catching
on in Japan. Chris Betros attends a "cropalong."
477: Moss cause
A sprinkling of moss can transform any windowsill into a miniature Zen temple.
Hanna Kite offers some tips for bringing a little tranquility home.
469: Ikebana for idiots
With a plethora of rules and schools, Ikebana can be intimidating, not to
mention time-consuming. But who says busy people have to miss out on this ancient
art form? Georgia Jacobs gives you the basics on no-fuss flower-arrangement.
466: A dyeing breed
Winning fans from New York to Tokyo, designer Akiyoshi Yaezawa is putting
a traditional stamp on modern accessories using a 17th-century hand-dyeing and
painting process. Krista Wilson reports.
457: Party of five
Matt Wilce lays out five luscious looks for New Year.
449: Thought out
Designers create spaces but they also like to inhabit them. SuperDeluxe offers
a place to drink and think for the design community—and of course their
friends
445: Design on Tokyo
A trio of interior design events is on its way to bring style into our Tokyo
living rooms
439: Setting pretty
Matt Wilce lays the table with styles for summer.
435: Tropical haven
Asian furnishings are finding their way to flats across the city
431: Wed white and blue
Treasures of traditional Japanese design, blue and white are the perfect foil
for Tokyo's sweltering summers
427: Have a ball
Who says you need tickets to catch a piece of World Cup action?
423: Collection point
Nishi-Ogikubo's 65 pre-loved furniture stores make up Tokyo's great antique
oasis
419: Flower power
Bring your gloomy flat back to life with seasonal flowers.
415: On the mend
Tokyo's fix-it men can have your furniture back in form
411: Phone home
Panasonic unveils the e-lifestyle of the near future
407: Launch Pad
Sputnik Pad lands in Jingumae
399: Interiors
Retrospective
395:
Interiors
Kitchenware flare
391: Interiors
Ideé is one of Tokyo’s most established interiors stores
387: Inner
sanctum
The days of sitting on the tatami floor are over
383: Life
in style
Tokyo's embraces ultra-modern design
367: Wealthy
workplaces
Put feng shui to work at work
364: Healthy
homes
The ancient Chinese art of feng shui
| | |
Living rooms
Inspired by the diverse lifestyles of this teeming metropolis,
design experts Kyoko Asakura and Jaume J. Nasple-Baulenas
have compiled an intriguing look inside the city's
private homes. Tama Miyake Lung talks to the authors of Tokyo
Houses.
 |
|
Scene
|
Pick up most books on Japanese houses and you'll find
either an austere tatami room decorated with a single scroll
or a six-mat apartment crammed with books, gadgets, clothes
and the other necessities of life in the big city. But take
Tokyo as a whole, with its 12 million-plus inhabitants and
hundreds of distinct neighborhoods, and the reality is much
more diverse and interesting.
At least that was the conclusion arrived at by husband-and-wife
design experts Kyoko Asakura and Jaume J. Nasple-Baulenas,
the Barcelona-based editors of Tokyo Houses. "There
are many negative images of a Tokyo populated with workaholics
who lead miserable lives, travel in a crowded transport network
amid an ugly cityscape, with people behaving like robots,
a high suicide rate and the hikikomori [withdrawing from society]
phenomenon," says Asakura, a native of Ota-ku. "That
is why we tried to offer a different image of Tokyo, to show
that people can also live very peacefully in a city with a
marked and deep personality. We tried to convey our knowledge
that in Tokyo people can lead very exciting lives, much more
so than what Europeans imagine."
Indeed, the 400-page book published last year by Germany's
teNeues as part of their "Designpockets" series
features a ranges of styles from the charming, single-family
Hijiki House in a leafy suburb to the forward-thinking Scene
house with its changeable spaces to the innovative I-House
built into a narrow Ginza alley. The authors' selection
of "real" houses offers a window into the city
as it has evolved over the centuries.
 |
| A House with "Koshikake-Machiai" |
"It is actually very unique that in Tokyo, a French-style
café can be built next to a temple or a shrine, or a
false Victorian house next to a shimotaya [old ordinary Japanese
house] and so on," explains Asakura. "A variety
of styles, not only Eastern or Western, but from elegant traditional
to pure kitsch and strange buildings-this is what makes
Tokyo a city of character."
Elements of style
Asakura, who grew up in a 1930s-era house with a Western faade
and Japanese interior, agrees with most observers that there
is no such thing as a traditional Tokyo house. But there are
elements to living here that are unique to Japan.
"The things that were necessary to explain to Western
readers were the customs of kutsunugi [taking one's
shoes off at the entrance] and oshiire [closet for storing
futons]," she says. "There's also a passion
for bathrooms. When they build a new house, many Japanese
make bathroom design a priority and bathing in hot water sets
out a totally different character."
One of the most striking examples of bathroom designs is displayed
on the cover of the 12.5x18.5-centimeter book. The glass-walled
Machiya house features an open-air tub on the roof, as well
as another tub inside the walled-in bathroom. A similar open-air
bath was built into the roof of the Nag house in Shibuya,
where the couple also incorporated a mosaic-tiled bathroom.
Outdoor bathing may not startle most Westerners, but the authors
found one particular facet of Tokyo that did. "The
design people or other staff of the book here in Europe were
quite surprised by the denshin bashira [electricity poles]
and by the cables hanging from them," says Asakura.
"Actually, the graphic designers tried to eliminate
the cable passing in front of the houses from the photo but
finally gave up. Most people in Barcelona had never seen such
a concentration of exterior cables or denshin bashira ever
in their lives."
 |
| Hayama Second House |
Building for the future
While many have derided the denshin bashira and the hodgepodge
of structures crammed into Tokyo, Asakura also sees a refreshing
new development in design. "In the '80s, during
the bubble economy, there was a famous keyword in Japanese
architecture known as 'scrap and build' and then
most contemporary architecture was described as 'ephemeral,'"
she explains. "If there's a progression, it
would be that a large number of people now seem to have become
tired of the so-called 'new-rich attitudes' and
they're gradually becoming more prudent and ready to
discover the merits of traditional values and decent design."
This return to tradition is a trend the authors see reflected
in Japan's young, up-and-coming architects and designers,
many of whom grew up or trained overseas. Chief among them
are Frenchman Manuel Tardits, whose firm designed the Shibuya-AX
concert hall; Germany-born Andrea Hikone, whose design with
Akira Hikone for the Open House in Shinjuku features ecologically
friendly materials; Paris-born Guen B. Suzuki, whose works
include several Tokyo apartments; and the Tokyo-based Milligram
Studio staffed by six architects aged 29-40.
As Asakura notes, "They are more flexible and reflect
more about the surroundings and about the clients who will
live in their works. They also seem to care and learn more
from the good traditional Japanese way of living."
She also hails their role as ambassadors of international
architecture, having experienced life outside Japan and therefore
offering a different perspective from the established construction
firms.
But of all the architects active in Tokyo today, Asakura and
Nasple-Baulenas point to one man as making the biggest impact:
"Toyo Ito. He is from Tokyo and his own house projects
in themselves symbolize the changes occurring in the city."
 |
Ito, a 1965 graduate of Tokyo University's architecture
department, has designed eye-catching buildings in Sendai
and London and is currently working on La fira de Barcelona,
a huge exhibition center. His Tokyo works date back to 1976
and include several private homes, including his own Architecture
Institute of Japan Award-winning Silver Hut.
"He likes the positively chaotic world of Tokyo,"
explains Asakura, who knows Ito personally. "It seems
as though he doesn't like to see people living in the
same kind of houses, doing the same things or wearing the
same clothes like in a science-fiction movie."
That chaos, however, is something that Asakura also sees as
potentially debilitating for Tokyoites. "Unfortunately,
there is still lot of confusion, craziness and too much ridiculously
eccentric bad taste in Tokyo, and many ordinary people seemed
paralyzed by this negative power, and confused about what
they want," she says, blaming in part the massive construction
companies that continue to wield so much power.
But as the people who populate the home in her book demonstrate,
there's also an upside: "Although Tokyo's
cost of land is still very expensive, one can manage to live
his own particular idea of luxury according to his own philosophy."
Tokyo Houses is available at www.amazon.co.jp
for ¥2,323 and at major foreign booksellers. For more
information on the publisher, visit www.teneues.de
Photo credit:
©Tokyo Houses, Scene (2000), Takuma Architectural Design
Studio, Photo ©Nacasa & Partners, published by teNeues,
20euros
©Tokyo Houses, A House with "Koshikake-Machiai"
(1983), Takatsuka Architects Firm, Photo ©Shogo Sato/Radius,
published by teNeues, 20euros
©Tokyo Houses, Hayama Second House (2001), Speed Studio,
Photo ©Shinkenchiku-sha, published by teNeues, 20euros
©Tokyo Houses, Machiya (2000), Takaharu und Yui Tezuka
Architects, Photo ©Katsuhisa Kida, published by teNeues,
20euros
|
