Koreisha
Architectural Research Project
TYPOLOGY: THREE GENERATION HOUSE THE TRADITIONAL JAPANESE HOUSE
The traditional japanese house is known in various typologies: a free standing house sometimes with a courtyard or garden, or a row house in urban areas. The traditional japanese house had no designated living or sleeping rooms. The only designated rooms are the genkan (the entrance hall), the kitchen, the toilet and the bathroom, often built as separate volumes attached to the main house. The detached house typology is built in one or two stories, with wooden floors slightly raised above the ground. In the genkan, people remove their shoes while stepping up onto the raised floor level, and placing their shoes with the noses outwards. The house is constructed in wood with a pitched roof covered with tiles or thatched. The roof also covers the roka, a wooden walkway that surrounds the whole (detached) house like a porch. The roka can also be closed with wooden sliding panels, but the actual ‘facade’ is placed inward, consisting of sliding doors called shoji, made of a wooden frame filled with thin paper that allows daylight to pass through. Inside, the ima or living space can be divided by fusuma, sliding doors also made of wood and paper that can create separate rooms. In the ima the wooden floor is covered with tatami mats that come in standard sizes – on of the first modular building systems perhaps is the japanese house. Furniture is movable and is stored in a big cupboard called oshiire, for example the futons used as beds that are stored away during the day. The bathroom or sento is always separated from the toilet and is used in a more than functional way: japanese families often bathe together and the bath is a place to socialise, relax and rest the body. Before entering the bath tub the body must therefore be clean already, so first people wash and clean themselves thoroughly in the space next to the bath tub, before entering the bath itself.