The Household and Community (2/2)

At the end of the first part of this two-part post, I noted that I don’t know of any other architect, housing association or housing provider who’s keen to incorporate Yamamoto’s recommendation that all dwellings have some kind of threshold space, physical or visual, connecting and at the same time separating the public realm and the private realm. This could just be me, or it could be because it’s more expensive upfront to provide such a space. There’s little point anyway if we’re not asking for something we’ve lost the ability to appreciate or use anyway. And this could be because people have been led to prefer the utmost degree of isolation (a.k.a. privacy) from the public realm.

Yamamoto is currentlyy a visiting professor at Kanagawa University (Yokohama, Japan), and has also been one at Tokyo University of the Arts (2022-2024), has taught at Nihon University, Graduate School of Engineering (2011-2013); Yokohama National University, Graduate School of Architecture (2007-2011) and at Kogakuin University, Department of Architecture (2002-2007). Assuming twenty students per semester, that’s direct contact with about 400 students. And if we add, say, at least another five students per year for the 40 years of those surveys, then that’s another 200 making, as a conservative total, 600 students who in some way were directly influenced by Yamamoto. Suppose 10% went on to become architects and 10% of those have work published, we’d expect to see and know of at least six architects who believed Yamamoto’s approach to housing and community is worth continuing. After all, this isn’t some stylistic or populist alignment that marks an architect as belonging to one university’s lineage or another. But who and where are these architects? It could be the case they exist and it’s just med who doesn’t know about them. So if anyone has any information on any architect who is designing housing with thresholds, then I’d like to know more. If worthy ideas aren’t propagating, then we have a big problem.

From last week’s post, the following four made the greatest impression. The first two because they allow for arbitrary combinations of living and work space, but mostly because they show Yamamoto’s principles aren’t limited to one dwelling on its own piece of land. Their shared access is necessarily managed space. The latter two impressed because the physical threshold becomes a visual one that can’t be crossed. With the Ban building that visual threshold is the physical barrier of airspace between the public realm and the (bathrooms and kitchens of the) private realm. With the second, the visual threshold is the (Implied) physical barrier of a patch of grass not intended to be walked on.

2004 Jian Wai SOHO (Beijing)

2003 Canal Court Codan (Tokyo)

2001 Ban Building

2008 Dragon Lilys House

For some years now, I’ve also been interested in this device of a void between the public and private realms forming a visual threshold. None of these projects have been built but the motivations and benefits were similar to Yamamoto’s even if not as well reasoned. Many of my proposals split the building along its access corridor and pull it apart to add overlooked void spaces on either side. The resulting space provides the two-way social benefits of an atrium or a courtyard but without actually being one. This device allows the access space to be naturally lit and ventilated along with the spaces that open onto it. These spaces are usually the entrance hallway, the kitchen, and the bathroom. Kitchen windows are well suited for these visual thresholds because they are occupied frequently for short durations. Bathroom windows are necessarily more obscured but bathrooms are also used frequently for short durations and the turning of lights on and off again indicates an inhabited building. Entrance hallways (rather than the door itself) are the physical intersection between the public and private realms giving it a window makes them into visual thresholds. This first proposal returned the underused space to the access corridor that is now overlooked by bridges and balconies as well as by secondary windows from the kitchens and staircases. It’s a variation on a 1955 André Devin project in Marseilles. [c.f. Detective Story] All windows are small, but the access corridor is now overlooked. (above) A variation on this used bridges instead of corridors. (below) [c.f. The Dispersed Apartment]

The street and sidewalk is the access corridor to what in London is known as a terraced house and in New York as a brownstone. Floors of the living space are one half a floor above and below the access level. This means there is rarely direct eye-to-eye contract between persons in the public realm and persons in the private realm, even though each may be aware of the other. 

This next project stacks that access configuration. The unit itself might be suitable for student or keyworker accommodation. Nearly 100# of all internal circulation in the central room is overlapped with the necessary activity space for the table and chairs. This room is illuminated by the large kitchen window facing the access. The building can be single or double sided. [c.f. Plan Without Qualities]

This next building is what’s known as a scissor stair residential block, developed by the London County Council about 1950. It’s a complicated invention. In the case of the unit shown in red, below, a person entering from the access corridor will go down half a flight of stairs to the living room. From there, they go up down another half flight of stairs to the bathroom C (below the access corridor they entered from). From there, they go down another half a flight of stairs to reach the bedrooms and, from there, they could go down another half flight of stairs to reach the access corridor below the bathrooms they just passed. The main advantage of this layout is that living rooms are all on the same side of the building, and bedrooms on the other. This particular building, Corringham, is known as the only architectural project Kenneth Frampton worked on. It has entrance corridors every second floor and double-sided units so there’s a bit of Unité DNA as was fashionable at the time. The improvement this configuration brings is that all living rooms can be on the same side of the building and all bedrooms on the other, depending upon view and noise conditions. 

My proposal below again streches the configuration to create vertical voids either side of the access corridor. (If an access corridor is going to be regarded as part of the public realm, then providing it with natural light and ventilation makes it a more convincing one.) In all these examples, the light and ventilation voids are used to physically (but not visually) separate the private and public realms. In this proposal, the staircase and kitchen window are the main means of sustaining a mutal awareness between public and private realms. [c.f. Incremental Improvements, Machine for Living Many]

Elevator lobbies also have potential to be physically shared space that is also shared visually. This net is a proof-of-concept proposal with three-storey high elevator lobbies every fourth floor. Occupants either walk up or down one flight of stairs to reach their unit. Here, the entrance hallway windows overlook the lobby while the kitchen windows overlook the entrance balcony. The entrance lobby is essential circulation passed through several times over the course of a day. [c.f. The Landscape Within]

This is what it looks like. The bottom left image is the view from the entrance lobby. Forgive the perspective, but the lobbyu dimensions are L26’ x W26’x H29’. This lobby is overlooked and/or used by twelve housholds or approximately 36 households. 

A stretched variation of a circular version had a three-storey access corridor overlooked by the living room from oriel windows. [c.f. Streets In The Sky]

My final variation in this series combined all these features in a building that cold be occupied by offices or residential units or some kind of vertical short-term let accommodation. All units can be linked verticall via the internal stairs but each floor retains its separate accesas. Regardless of use, the shared lobby/courtyard shows the internal life of the building and various comings and goings. [c.f. Defensible Space]

I’m aware of problems with these proposals. Accessibility takes a hit with split level access. There’s also a question of “sub-optimum” site ROI. Lake Shore Drive had a non-rentable area of only 11.4% – it’s one hard-nosed commercial project. These are all good ideas but although Riken Yamamoto can find clients to build what he proposes, his ideas aren’t finding any traction as far as I can see, most likely because they work against the Really Big Paradigm of housing to separate and isolate people. Housing in other countries isn’t as far gone. This next configuration isn’t uncommon in India where cross ventilation is important. Eight units per elevator lobby is the maximum other countries have discovered. This configuration is probably a natural consequence of all the habitable rooms facing outwards that the kitchens all overlook this well-travelled space in the middle. Nevertheless, persons in the kitchens will have a good idea of the internal life of the building, as will residents in these access spaces. People in India are comfortable with this degree of privacy and this degree of connection.

That’s not the case in Australia. Division and re-division of suburban blocks mean that blocks are narrower with width only for a master bedroom and a two-car garage. Living areas are pushed to the back of the house and away from the street. Some blocks have multiple houses pushed towards the rear of the block. Even detached dwellings get isolated from the street by a “protective” wall.

What to do? If a renowned architect and Pritzker Prize winner has so little agency to make a difference, then what hope the rest of us? These are my suggestions.

Don’t build a wall between your house and the street.

Have a glass front door.

Circulation space doesn’t need maximum “privacy”

This is particularly the case if your house has a wall around it, or if circulation spaces on an upper level can be seen. These supposedly private areas are already separated from the public realm by a void. It seems tha kitchens, home offices and circulation spaces are the best candidates we have for visual thresholds and this might be the best we can do. [c.f. Open House]

The summary of this summary is that houses once had spatial thresholds that both linked and separated the public realm and the private realm. Restoring the relationship we have with the world around us and reminding people that they share that world with others might involve something as simple as restoring the porch – it hasn’t been gone for that long. The meaning of it is, a sense of community is never going to happen if we insist of seeing other people as The Other. Not seeing other people as The Other starts with us being able to see them in the first place. This we are not doing. If, like Rocardo Bofill at Walden 7 in Barcelona, you can think of more ways to use internal circulation in high-density dwellings to recreate the advantages of the porch on the inside then so much the better. Porches, glass doors and strategically placed windows and voids won’t solve them all the world’s problems but, in the face of climatic and other threats, anything that encourages people to think not just of themselves but of the other people they share the world with, and that they are all in it together, will probably be a useful way of thinking even if worst doesn’t come to worst, but especially so if it does.

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