Collective housing in Japan taken to its limits
Japan is a territory under constant change, particularly in the urban environments. There, new buildings types are rising above the urban fabric of Japanese cities like trees in a dense forest of buildings. As the 21st century advances the city of Tokyo, like a living organism, is witnessing the birth of a new housing type.
As a large laboratory of ideas, the city is being transformed and in this process of constant renewal we identify a common pattern, a volumetric bias that appears assiduously in the denser districts of the large Japanese cities. The current profusion of these elements is reflected in the language of the Japanese who have named them pe-n-shi-ru-bi-ru, i.e., pencil building.
The ‘penshirubirus’ are a sign of a new vision of life in the city. Development and tradition will be the hallmark of this new urban housing, which is definitely an anomalous consequence of the current Tokyo context and a native Japanese species.
