Ch. 5, pp.216-220

“Don’t Struggle!”

To complete the story, the working drawings had been completed and, immediately before the construction company was to be decided, the mayor who had been enthusiastic about the competition lost the mayoral elections. The main reason for the ensuing confusion was that the opinion of the new mayor was swayed by one portion of the members. It was ordered that the construction committee of 45 persons be dissolved and that resident participation be discontinued. One had the feeling that the system of representative government with this system of deciding by resident participation was being challenged. The member who most strongly opposed the system was a female member “O” who was introduced as having been elected to three terms in Communist Party. She was of the opinion that government by anything outside of a party system was unthinkable, and that only elected officials had the power to decide. We were called to parliament and asked to explain the content of our proposal in detail to the mayor and parliamentary members. However, nobody was prepared to listen to our explanation of our proposal produced by ourselves and 45 of its citizens. The Communist Party member advised us not to struggle. I confess to not having known the meaning of the [Japanese] word she used but I believe it was chosen to inflame the residents. For that person, autonomous activity on the part of the residents was tantamount to opposing the party system. For these people, designers are persons obliged to follow the orders of the mayor and elected officials.

After that, the matter went to court. I became the plaintiff’s representative and, along with many other architects who participated in this competition appealed against the city’s decision on the grounds that it was a breach of trust to terminate a competition midway despite the competition being held under the positive guidance of the city and with the participation of its citizens. However, as a result of arbitration on the part of the judge, the case closed with the Ouramachi side issuing a formal apology. The judge of the Tokyo District Court asked me “Is a competition not a business?” and thereby showed he had no understanding of the work of architectural design. For this judge, the work of an architect was no more than another form of economic activity. In today’s society, the work of architects is nothing more another form of wage labour. The act of designing is labour that is faithfully performed in accordance with the command of the client (the government). Architects are reduced to working for the sake of money. In today’s society, it is not just designers but all types of work is simply labour performed for financial gain. However, the forty-five persons of the Ouramachi architectural committee did not work for money. They worked so that they could pass something on to future citizens. This is exactly the same as what we do on the design team. We are not designing for the purpose of our own financial gain. We make the “the things of the world” of the future. Our wish is to think and make things to pass to the people of the future.

This competition that Hiroshi Hara designed for the city of Ouramachi was groundbreaking in its concept. If the competition had run to completion, the meaning of resident participation would also have changed. The meaning of architecture may have changed a little. I believe that the actions of those forty five persons of the architectural committee clearly displayed the possibilities. It is extremely symbolic that the person who destroyed this possibility was a member of the [Japanese] Communist Party. For that person, decision by consensus cry the local people and decision by government within a party system were two mutually opposing systems. Such thinking was not limited to this one particular person as any private group (that Foucault called “a society” or Arendt termed “societies”) such as parliamentarians elected for the purpose of inducing profit has absolutely no understanding of who it is they are supposed to be representing. They display no awareness of representing the local society. They exist only as members of a party or as members of some profit-making organization.

Buildings, architecture is something that continues beyond the life of a person. How is one to design these things with longevity? The people of the Ouramachi architecture committee firmly believed they were taking responsibility for the things they did. And that they had the right – that is, the power – to decide within the limited range of the housing design. This is a power more direct than any system of parliamentary representation. It is the power of the residents.

5. The Political Vacuum of Committees

“One house per family” cannot make a community

The space that is society is a space that takes as its premise the housing system of one dwelling per family. The one dwelling per family housing system was designed for wage laborers. It exists as space that is bureaucratically ruled. The residents are closed within their privacy and separated from each other. It is a space where the residents have lost the right to be seen and heard by others. This one dwelling per family space where one can freely decide what one does. That housing is housing that separates those who are related from political activity. The space of society configured from housing such as this is divided into danchi [gated compounds] (groups) cannot make a community (Foucault, The Birth of Surveillance, p. 148) “The scattered arrangement within a group is a technique for regulation and training.” (ibid., p.148) The space of society is formed by the provision of closed housing such as that of one dwelling per family. The entire system is one of uniformity and homogenization within a plan ensuring mutual separation. Twentieth century architects and planners attempted to design communities (separated from each other) by means such as arranging buildings to surround a courtyard, by grouping houses in cul-de-sacs, and the provision of community halls but largely without great success. Predictably. Even if the interior of those dwellings was well thought through with regards to privacy, there is no theory for bringing them together. Even if there is a throw for how to make the interiors of those dwellings comfortable and for how to ensure they have sufficient daylighting and ventilation, there was no theory for how they should be put together. For this reason, daylighting conditions are used to determine the distance between individual residential buildings. The regulations relating to public housing stipulate that each dwelling is to receive four hours of daylighting even in winter so, assuming buildings of five storeys, this means they will all be aligned towards the south at a spacing of twenty five metres. This is the simple reason why public housing residential building are lined in rows. There is no other theory. The fundamental concept is that of providing privacy. And equality. For the designers of buildings, community is nothing more than than the pattern in which residential buildings are arranged.

“I feel a resistance when I hear the words community and locality. The sphere of a regional society is already made by a region and space but the adjacency and communality of space is not something that architects’ ideas tend to contain.” (Riken Yamamoto et. al. Regional Society Sphere-ism [apologies!], p.142) This is how Chitsruko Ueno criticized architectural planning studies in which applying a simple pattern is meant to imply a community. However, to oversimplify and criticize architects’ ideas it is to lose sight of the nature of the problem which is the provision of housing regulated by the system of one dwelling per household, and founded in the protection of privacy. The one dwelling per family system that ensures separation and no mutual relationships is the system in which we currently live. It is the system that is created by the the space that is society. One dwelling per family cannot make communities out of divided groups. It is not designed to do so. It is a matter of course that there is resistance to the words community and locality. This is because were are all living in the space that is society. It is us who are actually denying the community. However, from the inside of this space that is society, we are unaware of the space that is denying the community. We are not aware of living in a space that denies community.

This is the home stretch now. The meaning of the book’s title is becoming clear now. Residents have the power to make space and to not have that space thrust upon them. When I first began the translations, imperfect as they are, I wondered whether I should translate 権力 as “power” or “rights” when translating the title The Power of Space vs. The Space of Power. I chose power because it was a better fit for each of the two halves of the title but, from this installment it becomes clear that Yamamoto is using it in both senses when he talks about the rights of residents to make their own spaces and to not have spaces of (other people’s) power thrust upon them. The English language also has the related word pair of enfranchisement and disenfranchisement which is what this week’s installment was all about.

• • • 

2025/04/13 Ch. 5, pp.216-220
2025/03/30 Ch. 5, pp.210-215
2025/03/08 Ch. 5, pp. 208-210
2025/01/12 Ch. 5, pp. 201-207
2025/01/05 Ch. 5, pp. 195-200
2024/12/22 Ch. 5, pp. 187-195
2024/12/08 Ch. 4, pp. 179-186
2024/11/03 Ch. 4, pp. 175-179
2024/11/03 Ch. 4, pp. 169-175
2024/10/20 Ch. 4, pp.163-168
2024/10/06 Ch. 4, pp.159-163
2024/09/29 Ch. 4, pp.156-159
2024/09/08 Ch. 4, pp.152-155
2024/09/08 Ch. 4, pp.146
2024/08/25 Ch. 3, pp.135-1
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:

Kazuo Shinohara’s Houses
The Buildings of YEMEN
It’s Just Design