When it comes to sustainable city-building, high density is where it’s at. Urban innovators are always on the lookout for ways to fight sprawl.
In Japan, a country long resigned to dense living, young urbanites are glomming onto the “share house”—an architectural trend that involves strangers living communally, sharing most of their home’s spaces and basic amenities. It’s not a new concept. Much like the denizens of old-fashioned boarding houses, occupants of a share house typically rent a small bedroom for themselves and share access to larger spaces like the kitchen, dining room, and sitting room. Unlike traditional boarding houses, though, which are often stigmatized as dingy hovels, Japan’s shared dwellings are becoming models of architectural efficiency.
The new face of Japanese communal living is Share House LT Josai, a high-profile project in the city of Nagoya. Built in 2013, LT Josai looks like an Ikea showroom designed by M.C. Escher. As its architects explain, “a special technique… becomes necessary for complete strangers to naturally share spaces with one another.”
Designed on a multi-level grid, the house features 13 12.4-square-metre private bedrooms, and a variety of shared areas, each tailored to suit a specific type of housemate interaction. The atrium and dining room are meant for large gatherings, the “rug space” lounge is for two or three people to hang out in, and small living room nooks are best for alone time.
Japan has traditionally been a collectivist society, while Europe and North America have built a pretty individualistic one. And for all its modernity and diversity, many modern cities are still a pretty straitlaced individualistic towns, where “communal living” is often understood as “rutting with hippies.
Zengoku News
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