Ch. 4, pp. 146-151
- Sorry, there’s no plans this week, as promised. Before we proceed to municipal housing unit layouts, there’s this section dealing with the process by which municipal housing is designed or, as Yamamoto says, not designed.
- I’ve translated 整備局 as Office For Housing Policy as on the Metropolitan Tokyo Government website. The phrase Office For Housing Policy of the Metropolitan Tokyo Government occurs many times.
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Chapter 4: Standardization = Bureaucratically Controlled Space
1. ¥1 bid
The designer of the least expensive design is chosen
The construction of municipal housing is managed by the Office for Housing Policy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and the designers of that municipal housing are selected by a bidding process, and the architectural design office that bids with the least expensive design fee is chosen, and not on the basis of design quality. It is sufficient for the design fees to be low. This has been the custom for many years. What has been the result of this process?
- A May 20, 2011 newspaper article stated “As a result of competitive tendering for preliminary design work for the Municipal Housing North Nagafusa Complex (provisional name) to be constructed in Hachioji, the West Office of the Office for Housing Policy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government selected a bid for ¥10,000 (not including tax) for the construction of approximately 426 dwellings in five buildings.” The 426 dwellings will be designed for a preliminary design fee of ¥10,000. A meeting room will also be designed.
- On June 14 the same year, the same West Office of the Housing and Construction Bureau of the Tokyo Municipal Government announced the winning bit of a design fee of ¥10,000 for 98 dwellings for the Municipal Kamiseki Kamii 4-chome Complex.
- The previous day, the same West Office of the Office for Housing Policy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government announced that the preliminary design fees for the 92 dwellings of an eleven storey building for the Municipal Housing Nishiogu 8-chome No. 2 Complex.
- The preliminary design fees for the 240 dwellings of the Municipal Housing Funabori 1-chome Complex were also ¥1,000.
- The East Office of the Office for Housing Policy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government preliminary design fees for the Municipal Housing Hanabatake 7-chome Complex (of about 280 dwellings) were ¥10. (September 6, 2011)
- The same East Office of the Office for Housing Policy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government bid ¥1 for the preliminary design fees of the Minami Kamada 2-chome Complex. (October 27, 2011)
These preliminary design fees of ¥10,000, ¥1,000, ¥10 and ¥1 are for the design of municipal housing by the Office for Housing Policy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. The situation can only be described as crazy. Even assuming a cost of ¥12 million per dwelling, the total construction cost of 426 dwellings would be ¥5 billion. And this is being designed for next to nothing. This is simply not possible and everybody knows that, even if the preliminary design fees were ¥0, then the costs would be recouped by the fees for the working drawings that follow (and that normally are about double). If this is the process anticipated by the Bureau of Provision then the design fees are more than paid. The hidden message from the Bureau of Provision is that they have the designers. Municipal housing that is a public asset is being designed by designers that can afford to undercut others.
The message being sent from the Office for Housing Policy is that the design of municipal housing is already determined. “Municipal housing is no more than proposals for formulaic architecture based on standard designs. (建築通信新聞 “Architecture News” July 21, 2011) It is sufficient for the Office for Housing Policy to create copies of what the standardized municipal housing they have provided to date. There is no inquiry into new techniques. Because there is no special inquiry design creativity or skills, the lower the design fee the better. The message one receives is that “of making standard products the same as have always been made”. The thinking of the Bureau of Provision is that the design of municipal housing is already fixed but the Bureau of Provision is the party responsible for fixing the design and then supplying it.
But who decided it was fixed? Who decided that a standardized product was sufficient? Who decided that there should be no proposals and no competitions? Who decided that the lower the design fee the better? These are all reasons put forth from within the jurisdiction of the Office for Housing Policy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government
Everything is decided with the Office for Housing Policy. The thinking is that the method of supply of these buildings of theirs (The Municipal Bureau of Provision) is their right to decide. As if these buildings were personal property.
What is now happening in this standardized municipal housing of the Office for Housing Policy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. In just the case of the Municipal Housing Koyama Complex, “twelve people died solitary deaths and the ratio of elderly was over 50%” (Asahi Newspaper), “the number of deaths in municipal housing nationwide for 2009 was 1,191”, then “including the 472 solitary deaths of those 65 years of age or more in the UR [?] Complex, this means that “every day almost four people are dying solitary deaths”. (Mainichi Newspaper). The problem of ageing municipal housing is not one of the durability of the buildings themselves. “It is a problem of the system of supply of a standardized product that is premised upon “1 household = 1 house”. In Tokyo’s 23 wards, the average size of a household for 2001 was two persons. The proportion of single-person households nationwide was 29% in 2005.
The situation reversed in 2015 and single person households were the largest group. The proportion of elderly households was 23% and will soon rise to 25%. The problem of single-person households is not restricted to elderly peopler but is one that is gradually becoming more serious. The agenting of society and the increase in the number of single-person households are social problems and so is our method of supply of housing. It is the problem of housing that is standardized and fixed.
Isn’t it time the Office for Housing Policy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government thought again about how they supply housing? Is not the problem that this method of supply is determined internally and arbitrarily by themselves? For the Office for Housing Policy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, it is more important for it to be decided by their own internal logic and their own internal circumstances than it is to focus on who they are meant to be providing the housing for. This is bureaucracy as a philosophy, and designers operate at one end of it, applying their thorough logic to objects they think of as their own and that do not consider the actual users or the needs of those who will live there. The problem of the ¥1 bid lies here.
This was an extract from a piece in the industry newspaper 建築業界新聞 [Architecture Industry Newspaper] (April 27, 2012). I don’t know whether or not it was due to any influence of this article but on June 3rd, 2013, the Office for Housing Policy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government announced the implementation of proposals and procurers in a process of competitive design for the preliminary design of two other buildings forming part of the Municipal Housing Omori 4-7-chome Complex. The announcement said that the bidding process that had been used up till then would not be implemented, and that design proposals would be selected instead. The actual method involved a review of simple design ideas sketched on an A3 page. The intention was to use the method of proposals so that an excessive burden would not be placed upon designers who usually produce plans, perspectives and occasionally models for a full competition process. Fees for participating are not usually paid in the proposal system. The selection method respects the designer’s intent (and motivation) more than the bidding method, and was proposed by the Ministry of Land and Transportation. In passing, it is not known who would judge proposals of the Bureau of Provision of the Metropolitan Government of Tokyo, or the process or reasons for the selection of one proposal over another. This alone would be a problem but the remuneration for the preliminary design by the selected designer is ¥1,182,000 (incl. tax). For a total of 100 municipal housing units. Assuming a collective building of one hundred units, this would mean a combined floor area of between 5,000 sq.m and 6,000 sq.m and an assumed construction cost of ¥200,000 per sq.m gives a total construction cost of ¥1 to 1.2 billion yen. n order to design a building such as this, it is necessary to engage, at the very least, a structural engineering design office (for investigations into the structural system, concrete quantities and reinforcing, calculations for reinforcing, etc.), as well as other specialist consultants (for drainage, air conditioning, electrical supply, environmental impact studies and life-cycle costing). The estimated construction cost must also be calculated and so a quantity surveyor must also be engaged. Offices known as general design offices might have all these consultants in-house but must still bear the necessary expenses. Investigations must be made into the environment at the planned site, and and the best type of relationship for the planned project to have with the people in the surroundings. All these things determine the effectiveness of the site layout. How are the individual units going to be configured in plan? Once all these costs are included, I have found that with my own office, it is extremely difficult to produce a preliminary design for less than ¥1,500,000. In passing, the Design Calculation Reference guidelines determined by the Ministry of Land and Transportation (Ministry of Land and Transportation document No.15) are design references for the purpose of avoiding both undercutting and overestimating but local self-governing bodies are under no obligation to use them. The Office for Housing Policy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government calculated the cost of their design work at ¥1,182,000. This is far more authoritative than the ¥1 bid. This is authoritative in the sense of concealing the logic of bureaucratic distribution. The ¥1 bid was, at the very least, the intention of the designer. In a system of selection by bid, the reason the designer wants to be selected is monetary. In a body such as the Bureau of Provision, there is no evaluation of the architecture, and there are no value judgments for whether the proposal is an excellent one. Instead, value judgments have been willfully excluded. All there is, is the monetary equivalence of the bidders. In effect, the Office for Housing Policy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government is asking design offices to design for an amount of money that makes it impossible to maintain a design office. This instruction evaluates the the design of municipal housing as simple labour and to a very fine degree. It is an evaluation decided within the Office for Housing Policy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government itself. The basis for this evaluation is unilaterally on the client side. (Prior to construction, the designers and the client get together to determine the budget in a method known as “a composite estimate”. However, the client has already determined a maximum estimate and so anything exceeding that will be disqualified.)
Why do things such as this occur? They are not limited to the Office for Housing Policy of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. Some 70% of public architecture in Japan is procured by bidding. It is chosen not by the abilities of designers but by monetary amount (Surveys relating to design work performed for government facilities, Nationwide Conference of Building Maintenance Managers, June, 2012) And nor is it limited to the field of architecture. This is the state of Japanese society, a socialized nation-state. It is what happens when administrators meet corporations. This relationship between administration and corporations is what supports and sustains bureaucratic rule.
These few pages are what they are. We’ve come to the provision of municipal housing in Tokyo via Ancient Greece, vernacular architectures worldwide, and post Industrial Revolution England and France and had many quotes from Hannah Arendt, Marx and Engel along the way. I quite enjoyed Yamamoto’s analysis of the fees for producing a preliminary design. It was a refreshing reminder that all this thinking is not and can not be separated from running an architectural office.
• • •
2024/09/08 Ch. 4, pp.146–151
2024/08/25 Ch. 3, pp.135–143
2024/08/18 Ch. 3, pp.128–135
2024/08/11 Ch. 3, pp.120–128
2024/07/21 Ch. 3, pp.115-120
2024/07/21 Ch. 3, pp.108-114
2024/07/14 Ch. 3, pp.101-107
2024/06/30 Ch. 2, pp.92-100
2024/06/23 Ch. 2, pp.87-92
2024/06/16 Ch. 2, pp.78-87
2024/06/02 Ch. 2, pp.69-78
2024/05/05 Ch. 2, pp.66-70
2024/05/05 Ch. 2, pp.58-66
2024/05/05 Ch. 1, pp.46-55
2024/04/28 Ch. 1, pp.35-46
2024/04/21 Ch. 1, pp.23-35
2024/04/07 Ch. 1, pp.18-23
2024/03/31 Ch. 1, pp.14-18
2024/03/24 The Space of Power vs. The Power of Space: Preface pp. 7-11
Revisited this week:
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