Home-city interactions in suburban Tokyo

Abstract

In 2002, Ryue Nishizawa received the commission to build a house in the special ward of Ōta, a traditional village swallowed by the expanding metropolis. The proposed scheme colonizes the plot with independent boxes and interlocking gardens, allowing the owner to rent part of the property while paying his mortgage. This design strategy, based on a radical fragmentation of the dwelling’s program and on the blurring of hierarchies, is closely linked to Tokyo’s urban context, firstly in socio-economic terms. It also confers a renewed role to the existing network of urban voids from the neighborhood; it invites to a reconsideration of the idea of limit and it challenges traditional spatial binaries like exterior/interior or public/private. Ultimately, this paper aims to show how Moriyama House acts as an active component of the ever-changing city fabric around it, while questioning traditional bonds between home and city in the framework of contemporary culture.