The Concrete Chrysalis: Kiyonori Kikutake’s Sky House. By Hector Andres Gonzalez Cantu Is the house—as French architect extraordinaire Le Corbusier put it—a machine for living? Sure, most of the spaces in a house have a specific function that relates to how we live. But the way we live changes all the time, and not only on the macroscale, through massive technological breakthrough and changing social movements. The way we live changes also at the micro-level, the personal level. From one day to another, a pet, or even a new human being, arrives in the house. A life-changing accident, both negative, like losing the ability to walk, and positive, like winning the lottery, can have immediate effects on our daily lives. These events will change our living space, and if its rigidity disallows these changes, maybe we’ll end up looking for a more suited space elsewhere. What if architecture can grow and change to fit changing needs? Is the house more like a concrete chrysalis, primed for change, than like a machine for living?
Even though most of the work that the Metabolists made in Japan was on the macro scale, one of the most emblematic projects from the early era of the movement is the hous the architect Kiyonori Kikutake built for himself, nicknamed the Sky House.
Model of Kiyonori Kikutake’s Marine City (1963)
The Japanese word for metabolism is shinchintaisha, which also means renewal. The term metabolism in biology refers to the processes by which cells obtain energy for their vital functions, and by which new material in cells is assimilated. Metabolism was the chosen name of a group of young Japanese architects that, faced with the rapid changes of postwar Japan, proposed an architecture that would assimilate those changes, that would adapt and grow. Architecture that would evolve. One of the main design concepts that the Metabolists made use of was that of the megastructure, a main structural and functional hub, with smaller structures that would be renewed and change according to the necessities of the users.
The Sky House, located in Tokyo, was a micro application of the Metabolist ideas, with the superstructure being concrete frames and slabs, and the substructures modules for living: bathroom, kitchen, storage spaces, even whole rooms.
The faรงade of the house reads as an approximation of traditional Japanese dwelling through the lens of modern materials. The traditional slated roof now is made from reinforced concrete. The engawa, which is a veranda that follows the perimeter of the home, and several other traditional elements, like sliding doors, make an updated appearance in the Sky House. But perhaps its most important connection to the traditional Japanese house is the flexibility allowed by its plan.
The Sky House has a deceptively simple square plan, but the living modules allow for the interior spaces to constantly shift. Throughout its history—it still stands today—these modules have had many changes, and new ones have been added and subtracted. The two main modules initially were the kitchen and the bathroom. These two servant spaces are mostly meant to be used, and are both essential for living and tangential to actually living: you need a bathroom in your house, or near it, but it would be a shame if you had to make your living room smaller, depriving you of space for welcome company, to be able to have a bathroom.
The servant spaces modules in the Sky House are independent from the structure, and can be moved if it is required. Even though the modules are not meant to be moved all the time, since changing them is a relatively complicated process, they can be changed it the user’s needs change. Maybe the wind shifts with the season, and there’s definitely one of the modules that you wouldn’t want to be downwind of.
The other main modules in the original arrangement of the Sky House were partial room separators, that helped define the hierarchy of the rest of the space. The room separators, not unlike the sliding fusuma of traditional Japanese houses, allow for the space to be reconfigured in an unending number of ways.
Eventually other modules were added, one of the most memorable being a capsule that was hanged from the main floor, and served as the dwelling for Kikutake’s son throughout his childhood.
The echoes of the Metabolist movement are still felt today. Some of their most ambitious and imaginative projects, like Kikutake’s own Marine City or Kisho Kurokawas Neo-Tokyo proposal, serve as tantalizing glimpses into a future that even today we haven’t reached. Their built work, in particular Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower, stand as reminders of a failed utopia towards which we can still aspire. The Sky House, though smaller and less ambitious than the rest of the projects, remains a powerful proof of concept of the metabolist ideas. A house may be a machine for living, but it can also be a flowering plant and a garden, and a concrete chrysalis, always ready for change, growth, and renewal.
References. Frampton, Kenneth, and Ashley Simone. A Genealogy of Modern Architecture: Comparative Critical Analysis of Built Form. Lars Müller Publishers, 2016. Holt, Michael. “Kikutake's Sky House: Where Metabolism & Le Corbusier Meet.” ArchDaily, ArchDaily, 19 Feb. 2014, www.archdaily.com/477882/le-corbusiermodel-for-the-metabolists. Moreno, Lucas. “THE METABOLISM MOVEMENT - THE PROMISED TOKYO.” Sabukaru, Sabukaru, 11 June 2020, sabukaru.online/articles/the-promisedtokyo. All images obtained from the referenced sources.