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Yoshiharu Tsukamoto

House & Atelier Bow-Wow, Tokyo, 2005

Perspective section of the House & Atelier Bow-Wow.
The different sizes of the floors are disposed in the continuous
vertical/lateral space of the building envelope defined by the
local code. Working and living are intertwined.

Void
Metabolism
Since the Second World War, the urban fabric of Tokyo
has been shaped by individual landownership and the
proliferation of the detached house. For most Japanese
architectural offices, domestic practice provides the mainstay
of their work. This focus on the single private house,
though, also limits the range of possibilities for urban
interventions. Yoshiharu Tsukamoto of Atelier Bow-Wow
explains how through its development of Void Metabolism,
the studio has been able to turn its focus on the residential
into a positive, breaking down the barriers between private
and shared space in the city.

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Atelier Bow-Wow has been designing small houses in Tokyo for

more than a decade. But even as the practice is joined by most
architects of the same generation, who also predominantly
design small single-family homes, it has realised that with each
housing unit averaging a floor area of just 80 square metres
(861 square feet) within this enormous city of over 30 million
inhabitants, this pursuit would have little effect on the city
itself.
Looking back in history, Japanese architects have worked
feverishly on the different housing types of Tokyo, while the
area in which these houses were built has shifted over time.
Architects such as Junzo Yoshimura or Kazuo Shinohara
worked on houses in the suburban developments that preceded
the Second World War, while the following generation of
Toyo Ito and Kazunari Sakamoto, working in the 1970s,
were designing homes for the second wave of suburban
developments that had already begun in the 1960s. So Tokyos
single-family homes designed by architects during the 20th
century were mainly part of new suburban developments.
Compared to these previous practices, architects today are
more involved in the process of regenerating the existing
residential areas.
There are two areas where most of the current regeneration
is taking place. The first is the so-called wooden rent-house
belt surrounding the central core of Tokyo. Characterised by
small wooden houses and narrow winding streets, it was built
during two large migration movements following the destruction
of the old city centre by the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923,
and later by the US air raids in 1945. The other development
area lies within the first generation of suburbs, which are
now undergoing property subdivision mainly as a result of
high inheritance tax. The houses Atelier Bow-Wow has been
designing fit within these contexts. It could be argued that
the current generation of architects has facilitated the urban
metabolism through their housing designs.
The word metabolism made its first appearance in
architectural discourses at the World Design Conference
1960 in Tokyo as part of a manifesto by architects Kiyonori
Kikutake, Kisho Kurokawa, Fumihiko Maki and Sachio Otaka,
and architectural critic Noboru Kawazoe. Japanese cities
have repeatedly experienced huge amounts of destruction as
a result of earthquakes and air raids. While by the 1960s the
city had rapidly recovered, it was still relatively unsustainable
and fragile. Against this backdrop, the Metabolists group
established a new concept of the urban environment as a
changing and dynamic city. This was a historical value-shift
in the realm of urban and architectural theory. In a sense,
Metabolist thinking gave Japanese society an understanding
of where it was, and a direction as to where it should go. The
Metabolists produced a vast amount of visionary architectures
and urban designs, with two elements in particular
characterising their projects: a permanent infrastructural
core that integrated circulation, as well as the capsules that
represented the individual parts of the system.
These types of large-scale, urban architectural creations
can only occur in relation to the concentration of political
power and capital. As a result, the real city has not been
developed in the manner in which the Metabolists assumed
and imagined. The reconstruction of Japanese cities after the
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Core Metabolism versus Void Metabolism

below: The form of contemporary Tokyo is
quite different from what was envisioned by
the Metabolist movement of the 1960s.

Core Metabolism

Void Metabolism

Land subdivision in residential areas

above: As conditions stipulate that each
section of a divided lot must abut the street
by a distance of no less than 2 metres (6.5
feet), flagpole sites and other types of lots
have become symbolic of this process.

Vast continuous urban fabric of detached

houses
top: Residential sections of Tokyo were
developed with a predominance of
detached houses, and all available urban
real estate has long since been completely
exploited.

Wooden rent-house belt, Tokyo

below: Map showing the fire belts areas
with a high concentration of wooden
houses and evacuation sites in Tokyos 23
municipalities.

House demolition in Tokyo

centre: In comparison to other countries,
the average lifespan of a house in Tokyo is
alarmingly short at only 30 years.

Second World War went in the opposite direction. Numerous

small landowners emerged as a result of the policy that
encouraged individuals towards landownership and, in
turn, created the drive they needed to construct their own
private homes. Such construction continued and has today
reached an unprecedented level within the city. The grain of
detached houses forms the character of suburban residential
areas, which are connected by train networks. High-rises
are appearing only around the stations. This speaks to the
importance of the detached house as a dominating type
and integral structure within Tokyo, while simultaneously
being perceived as the biggest obstacle by politicians and
investors who want drastic urban transformation and the
commercialisation of real estate in a city of 1.8 million
landowners. For them, todays urban fabric is a negative
legacy; they are failing to see the potential hidden within it.
What architectural design can do is to establish a framework
to show how this urban legacy can be used productively as a
catalyst for inventive solutions for housing designs, which, in
turn, might improve the quality of the city as a whole.
The average lifespan of a house in Japan is 30 years,
giving Tokyo a unique rhythm in comparison, for example,
with Englands 140-year housing lifespan. Because of this
very short cycle, Tokyo is continuously undergoing a process
of metabolism one without cores or capsules, but with voids
and small buildings. This Void Metabolism is in contrast
to the Core Metabolism of the 1960s. Directly emerging
from the conditions of the city, the first generation of Void
Metabolism started in the 1920s with the first wave of
suburban developments. Over the course of 90 years, with its
average 30-year lifespan, the detached house has experienced
multiple cycles of regeneration and reinvention. As such,
the small houses that Atelier Bow-Wow is now working on
in Tokyo can be understood as part of the fourth generation,
providing a better understanding of Tokyos urban landscape
and allowing for a critical examination of the previous three
generations.
Society, economy, technology, regulations, materials and
families themselves have changed tremendously in the last
90 years. As houses emerge within very different contexts
in different periods, and their lifespans vary slightly and
regeneration happens seemingly randomly, it seems inevitable
that the cityscape is inconsistent in terms of visual order with
all of the houses from different generations. The transformation
of the house type over this period has resulted in smaller
property sizes, narrower distances between buildings, the
disappearance of quasi-exterior space (such as engawa and
nokishita, where inhabitants could spend time outside of the
house), smaller facade openings, and greater isolation for
single families. In short, the history of the house in the 20th
century is characterised by its loss of generosity and eventual
introversion. This spatial structure of the city might affect
social issues; for example, a single elderly man might die
alone and be discovered only two months later, or domestic
violence may increase and go unnoticed. How do we react
to this situation? Can we rescue the house from this spiral of
intolerance? Is it possible to make a fourth-generation house
more tolerant while simultaneously taking advantage of current
advances?
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Analogical townscape
below: The different types of housing
in Tokyo can be classified into three
generations, each of which is identifiable by
specific characteristics.

Different generations of housing in

Okusawa, Tokyo
bottom: Due to the short lifespan of
housing in Japan, Tokyos suburbs consist
of a variety of houses from different
generations.

Tokyo is a city made of houses, where the residential and

commercial elements permeate the highly dense urban
fabric as the result of the economic growth of Japan over
the last half-century.

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House & Atelier Bow-Wow, Tokyo, 2005

opposite top, below and bottom right: An
example of a fourth-generation house.

Atelier Bow-Wows aim is to free the fourth-generation

house by combining three premises. First, the house must
have spaces where non-family members can engage with the
building; to make the house more open and connected to the
city, workspaces, studios and shops become relevant elements.
Second, the house needs a semi-exterior space where people
can spend time, where just saying hello to the neighbours is
enough to become a part of the streetscape. When a resident
is sick or absent from these spaces for a few days, this will
register with neighbours who will enquire whether everything
is all right. Third, a more organic spatial relationship needs
to be constructed between buildings. The space of the house
needs to be redefined with adjacent elements both inside
and outside the site. Small gardens in gaps between adjacent
buildings can avoid a closing-off of the building from the
city, ultimately positioning the lives of inhabitants within the
broader territory of the city environment.
Tokyo is a city made of houses, where the residential and
commercial elements permeate the highly dense urban fabric
as the result of the economic growth of Japan over the last
half-century. This condition is fragile, though, since it exists
as a process of urban transformation, but lacks any analytical
framework to be evaluated. It is necessary to clarify the value
of this kind of urban fabric. While building typologies, urban
patterns and the collective imagery of most cities is relatively
fixed (think of the New York of the early 20th century, Paris of
the 19th century, and Venice of the 16th century), Tokyo has
excelled as a city through its unique condition of embodied
changeability. With a better understanding of what is here
called Void Metabolism, Atelier Bow-Wow aims to give this
exceptional circumstance a theoretical framework, no longer
viewing the dynamic of urban housing typologies as a problem,
but rather as a potential within which to work. 2

Text 2012 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Images: pp 889,

92(t), 93 Atelier Bow-Wow; pp 90, 91(c&b), 92(c&b)
Tokyo Institute of Technology Tsukamoto Laboratory; p 91(t)
Manuel Oka

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