AN INTERSECTION OF JAPANESE ARCHITECTURE: TRADITIONAL STRUCTURE MEETS THE MODERN AESTHETIC
I started out this semester studying Japanese Joinery, an architectural tradition of the East, which has existed for hundreds of years. Originating in China before slowly migrating through Korea to Japan, Joinery is the process of creating a wooden structure whose pieces fit together and requires neither glue nor nails to hold it upright. The forms that developed in Japan became signature to the country and required extreme skill. The carpenter was both the designer and head builder and oversaw each project from start to finish. This position encompassed years of apprenticeship, training, and finally practice with hundreds of different types of tools and rituals that each had to be mastered. Today, no such position (in its original form) exists, only a tiny number of Japanese joint carpenters exist and their practices have been vastly altered. The appeal and usage of joinery as a load-bearing system has vanished and has been replaced by steel. However, in a country located on top of a huge fault and thereby prone to numerous amounts of earthquakes, a quick glance to the past may prove helpful for the architecture of the country. Old temples that were constructed using the joinery techniques have outlived many modern buildings, even with their fancy architectural and technological advancements. For this project, I have merged the structural integrity of a classical Japanese joint-based building using three traditional joints with the modern aesthetic and needs of the average 21st century Japanese family.
Please note that all images presented here are either hand drawn, rendered, or colored by Emily Kim
JOINTS 1. brioki - gake joint
2. daimochi - tsugi joint
section
section expanded top view The brioki-gake intersects the upper-beam and attaches the main frame to the roof.
expanded The daimochi-tusgi intersects the main frame and attaches it to the upper beam.
3. cross-beam girder joints section
section
They are vital to the structure of the building as they hold and balance the load-bearing columns. These pieces are therefore siginficantly bigger and longer than the other joints. They are repeated multiple times throughout the building.
The cross-beam girder joints connect the cross beams to the main poles which hold up the building. These run across the width of the building and connect the columns which you can see represented as circles in the floorplan.
expanded expanded
FLOORPLANS first floor
While designing this house, I wanted to make sure that I did not focus solely on the infrastructure. The different spaces and how they flow in between one another was an important part of my process. For the first floor, I wanted to create a pretty open space where the family and guests could interact together. The living room takes up the majority of the first floor and is at the center of the building. The library, which is the first real room you encounter upon entering the house, has sliding doors on both sides so that the space can be made more or less private depending on the particular needs of the family. As you walk further into the space, a private space - a bedroom - is tucked away but also does not alter block the openness of the first floor. The only other closed off room is the bathroom which is also tucked away next to the staircase and directly adjacent to both the living space and the dining area. The dining area flows neatly into both the living space as well as the kitchen as an intermediary space. Though all of them are uninhibited by walls, the inset which the kitchen lies in helps create a slightly more private feeling. Additionally, the green/outdoor space can be entered from either the entryway or the kitchen.
second floor
For the second floor, I wanted to mimic part of the openness from the first floor while focusing more on the nuclear family environment. A large portion of the second floor is also living space, though smaller than before and slightly off centered. The public space is less centrally located because of its usage between the three floors. The idea behind the space is that it can still be a space for the family to come together, but is slightly removed from what is going on directly below. A good portion of the space is located directly above where the library and bedroom are on the first floor, paralleling the idea that this space is slightly more private than its previous iteration. At the center of the space, a skylight with a small raised wall surrounding it fosters the potential for auditory unity between the first two floors but also allows for a visual blockade while still bringing natural light into the living space below. The master bedroom and second bedroom are tucked away in the wings of the building to help emphasize the feeling of intimacy within these spaces.
third floor
The third floor is interesting in that there are no actual walls present. A typical Japanese residence houses a family made of up 3-4 people and often 2-3 generations. That being said, there is no spatial reason why a third floor needs to exist. However, considering the amount of public space there is in this house, I wanted to create one last intimate space where a person could cut themselves off from the rest of the house while still being able to see and hear what is going on below. Here instead of implementing stairs like I did between the first two floors, I created a small space for a ladder to rest, allowing the user to decide whether or not others have access to the space as well. The rest of the space outside of the study is open, making it a deceptively private platform. The emptimess also almost directly mimics that of the first floor, with a large centrally located open space. This also allows light from the large skylight directly above the center of the house to pass through unblocked.
DESIGN
When I was designing this building, I wanted to make sure that the structure was strictly traditional Japanese joinery but that the aesthetic as well as the layout of the building would be in line with the needs of a modern Japanese family. Researching a wide variety of popular contemporary residential architecture in Japan, I developed an outline for the most common and thereby important aspects of the ‘Modern Japanese House’, which read as follows:
NATURAL LIGHT NATURE MINIMALIST EXPOSED WOOD DEGREES OF INTIMACY
front view
LIGHT
N AT U R E
first floor
second floor Natural light is heavily used and exalted within Japanese homes, so I addressed this by designing lots of windows whose placement were directly influenced by the space within. Thus, the appearance of the windows from the exterior becomes an interesting conversation of asymmetrical polygons, distinctly different from typical modern Western architecture. third floor
*The yellow represents sources of natural light (windows).
side view
The visibility and interaction with nature is a huge part of Japanese culture and architecture, dating back to the years when joinery was more prevalent, due to the influence of Zen Buddhism in Japan. Finding the space for nature is especially difficult in such a physically small country. Here I have created a cutout which acts as a green space for the occupants, provided with both physical and visual access.
MINIMALIST
EXPOSED WOOD
angled front view
angled back view
The overall lack of decoration on both the outside and inside of the building is also linked to the minimalist aesthetic associated with Japan which is also influenced by Zen Buddhism. This also affected the amount of furniture both built in and added that I have designed into the space.
Having exposed wood, which has become so popular in Japan, (probably again linked to the minimalist look of Zen Buddhism) was an easy design decision that I made before even thinking about the modern aesthetic. Wanting to stay true to architectural form, I decided to keep the joinery pieces made of wood and keep them exposed as they were traditionally. Since I made the decision to actively borrow from the past, I wanted to make sure that the structure was visible and interacted with on a daily basis.
DEGREES OF INTIMACY
first floor
side view
second floor
third floor *The darker the gray, the more enclosed/private the space.
As a home designed specifically for a family, I wanted to create a variety of different spaces for different types of interactions. I wanted more public spaces like the living room, kitchen, and dining space to be more physically open while bedrooms and bathrooms needed to be more intimate and therefore closed off. The movement between differently programmed spaces was also important to me, so I attempted to create a rhythm throughout the entire house which would help encapsulate the separate rooms into a more cohesive whole.
emily kim special studies fall 2014