Tiny Houses - Japanology Plus

[Music] hello and welcome to japanology plus i'm peter barakan i'm in a residential district in tokyo in japan and particularly in tokyo land is at a premium and as a result japanese homes have a reputation for being somewhat on the pokey side i can even remember them being referred to somewhat unkindly i thought as rabbit hutches in the past however people find ways to make even cramped spaces eminently livable and the word or expression tiny houses has become something of a buzzword recently it refers to homes of about 50 square meters that's 500 square feet most of them are built to order and the demand for them is growing all the time today we're going to take an up-close look at tiny houses you'll find tiny houses all over tokyo we're going to begin by visiting two of them [Music] each of them is home to a family of three two parents and a daughter [Music] the first house occupies just 23 square meters on a rectangular plot that's three meters wide [Music] directly opposite the front door is a bedroom with furniture at a minimum there's space for the parents to sleep comfortably on the other side of this wall is a staircase underneath it is a storage area and a toilet compact houses take advantage of any available space no matter how small this toilet for example fits perfectly under the stairs [Music] upstairs is a living and dining area where the family can relax and enjoy each other's company [Music] this area has a surprisingly high ceiling [Music] design choices like this create a sense of openness they're a common feature of tiny houses this gigantic set of shelves occupies a tall narrow wall the spiral staircase leads to an attic it acts as a bedroom for the daughter of the family and offers room for even more storage [Music] clothes can be dried on the rooftop there's a terrace up here too offering views across the neighborhood the family can gaze at the trees while enjoying a cup of tea or a barbecue our home isn't too big or too small it's just right and easy to clean we're very happy here now a second very small house with a frontage just 1.8 meters wide this one occupies 50 square meters viewed from above we can see that the building is l-shaped in densely populated areas houses with an unusual layout are quite common just inside the narrow entrance is a toilet a corridor and a wash basin there's a small garden at the corner of the l giving the whole home a light and airy feel to the right of the garden is a living and dining area the uniformly white walls help to create a sense of space there's a spiral staircase next to the garden spiral staircases don't take up much room so they're often used in houses where space is at a premium upstairs is a bedroom and a bathroom the bedroom is small but not claustrophobic light enters from the balcony and garden [Music] next door to this is a bathroom space containing both a bath and a toilet [Music] the two sections are separated by transparent glass giving a sense of depth [Music] in order to make best use of the limited land they occupy many small houses have basements the basement in this home has an office and a bedroom for the daughter it's small and the layout is quite unusual but it's very functional spending time here really is very enjoyable i'm actually inside the house that you've just seen and i'm going to be talking to mr sugiyora who's the architect who designed and built it hello nice to meet you nice to meet you too yours is [Music] he has designed around 150 very small houses and is now an authority on the subject [Music] inside the house actually feels a lot more spacious than it looks from the outside it does when designing homes like this it's useful to look back at the knowledge and techniques used to build matcha and tea rooms traditional spaces like that by using them as a reference you can make a place that is comfortable in spite of its size machia literally of course means townhouse but you're talking about the machia in kyoto i presume which i mean most of them were built quite a long time ago although they're still there and again that they're very narrow fronted they look like they're tiny but in fact when you walk inside they go all the way back um so they're actually quite spacious um so you actually took ideas from those that's right they're long and thin getting air and light in is difficult but installing an inner garden helps to achieve that inner gardens are relaxing spaces and perfect for keeping track of the changing seasons [Music] also facing the street matcha have lattice work it's the border between the indoors and outdoors quite a bit of thought has gone into that the windows and doors facing the street are latticed this protects the privacy of the residents while admitting light and fresh air matia feature various ingenious touches to make the best use of the space available many of them have staircases behind doors or screens with storage compartments under the steps after researching traditional architecture i came up with three concepts see-through overlapping and opening up three principles applying those techniques very tiny houses can be very comfortable places to live [Music] first see-through take the staircase we have here it's open to the light and air compared to a normal staircase with solid steps its impact is greatly reduced using metal mesh instead of a solid material reduces the visual impact of the stairs and gives an increased feeling of spaciousness the same goes for that lattice work there you can glimpse the outdoors you can see if it's a sunny day or if it's not that's a very important point if that was just a wall everything would feel totally closed off how visible are the people inside to people outside in the daytime from the inside you can see out but from the outside you can barely see in next let's consider overlapping this is actually the kitchen oh okay as you can see it's a fully equipped kitchen you open it up when you're cooking afterwards when you're eating or relaxing you close the screen so it's a kitchen and a living area i call that feature overlapping also there's a light up here if you leave that on when you close the screen it increases the feeling of space [Music] so the lighting also makes an impact [Music] lastly opening up the area above us is open that creates vertical space [Music] although the ceiling is low elsewhere you don't feel closed in it gives an illusion of space i see by not building a wall for example or by sliding doors out of the way you can create a more spacious environment techniques have been put to use in the bathroom too [Music] see that skylight there yes thanks to that you don't feel so shut in i think this is an example of opening up the ceiling is similar it's not flat it starts low and slopes up again creating a feeling of openness also we have this glass screen the toilet and wash basin are here it's all in one space okay if there was a solid wall here everything would feel so cramped by not having a wall and using glass instead that is avoided obviously there are pros and cons of living in a very small house and the cons are obvious to everybody what would you say the pros are well no space is wasted there's a very rational approach to functionality for example in japan it's rare for the toilet and bath to be in the same room but here it makes sense for them to be close together they're easier to maintain and cheaper to install and this whole idea of small houses would you say it's a particularly japanese thing well i think the desire to live in a very small house is quite japanese in big cities in countries like vietnam and china people often live in apartment blocks you don't see very many small detached houses right the routes of very compact houses can be traced back to the 1950s many people had lost their homes as a result of air raids in the second world war the government made public money available for the construction of new houses one condition was that the house should occupy no more than 50 square meters of land the properties built using that funding are said to have become the prototypes for the small houses we see today when japan's economy took off owning a house became the dream of many japanese in the bubble economy of the late 80s the price of land suddenly shot up wealthy people bought up land in the city centers and built lavish residences [Music] for everyone else owning a house in the middle of a big city became increasingly difficult an apartment was the best they could do [Music] people who couldn't give up on the idea of a house bought land outside town and built a place there then in the early 90s the bubble burst in the economic difficulties that followed land was often divided into smaller lots to make it easier to sell people who acquired small patches of land had homes custom built and these properties became known in japanese as tiny houses this new form of urban housing gradually took hold since these kind of extremely small so-called tiny houses came on the market how has demand changed over the years well in the early 90s demand grew quite slowly but in the middle of the decade it accelerated from the year 2000 demand rose steadily and that rise continued until quite recently right now it's leveling off somewhat before the 1990s the idea of living on 30 to 70 square meters of land didn't really appeal to many people but numerous examples were featured in the media people realized that very small houses were viable and demand shot up i also think that disasters like the great hanshin awagi earthquake had an effect after an earthquake structures may need to be rebuilt in the case of a condominium you can't rebuild without the agreement of all the people who own units in the block if you own your own house you have greater freedom to choose i see that as one reason why tiny houses flourished in urban areas another factor is the increased number of dual income households particularly couples in their 20s or 30s if both of them have jobs they want to live centrally as it's more convenient for work also the birth rate is declining a small family doesn't need a large house a little house in the city centre will do it suits them perfectly so japanese people have a preference for living in their own house rather than in a housing complex yes well of course condominiums haven't been around for that long previously people had always lived in houses especially those engaged in agriculture and many more people used to live off the land condominiums emerged as a way to make effective use of urban land until then they hadn't existed i understand wanting to have your own house i felt exactly the same way when we built our own house uh 20 something years ago but even though you want to be close to the center of the city to put up with that shortage of space to a lot of people outside japan would would close to unreasonable i think what do you think it is about the japanese that makes them able to deal with that in the past grandparents parents and children would all share a house that had just one or two rooms and they didn't think of it as a particularly difficult situation also to many japanese the idea of distilling things into a self-contained world has an aesthetic appeal take bonsai for example in one small pot you have a garden you have the oceans the entire planet is represented in that tiny display japanese are good at creating that aesthetic we enjoy it houses are the same distilling a house to its essence is an idea that many japanese like boiling everything down takes ingenuity it takes creativity but it makes people's homes more enjoyable to live in that's a key factor and with these small houses the majority of them are built to order what is it going to cost someone to build a house like this for example the houses i make cost 1 to 1.2 million yen per 3.3 square meters regular houses cost 800 000 to 1 million yen for the same unit area they're slightly cheaper with very compact houses you usually can't just buy ready-made furniture and use that as is it simply wouldn't fit it's best to make bespoke furniture that's one factor in the relatively high price building a very small house is no simple feat let's see what happens first the architect does a preliminary inspection this particular plot occupies 60 square meters on the corner of a residential street the architect checks the sunlight the surrounding environment the amount of traffic and the view in this case the house can't occupy the entire plot a local regulation dictates that it can only occupy 60 or less the height of the building is also regulated it must not block sunlight to the houses next door the inspection is made with these restrictions in mind the architect speaks to a local resident and learns that this used to be the site of a well it's an unexpected development to prevent problems during construction the well must be found they do everything they can it was right in the middle of the plot once the site has been fully evaluated the design work can begin [Music] the exterior layout and number of rooms are planned out in accordance with the client's needs and budget [Music] this shows the layout at street level including the kitchen and living area the well will be incorporated into a garden with the rest of the building forming a c-shape around it the architect shows the design to her [Music] supervisor the architect's supervisor thinks that the walls on either side would make the central area feel oppressive he advises her to use diagonal roofs following this suggestion she reworks and finalizes the plan the next step is to produce a model this makes it much easier for the client to visualize what the building will be like [Music] here is the finished model a c-shaped building with slanted roofs [Music] the clients come and have a look there's a large well in the center of the plot so we included that in our design with the client's approval an even more detailed design is produced and construction finally begins the whole process takes an extraordinary amount of effort it also requires a high budget including the land cost the price to build a very small house near the middle of tokyo is at least 70 million yen for many people that's prohibitively expensive recently there's a new trend in response to demand for cheaper homes pre-fabricated tiny houses this is a showroom for them in yokohama using 12 square meters of floor space they contain a living room beds [Music] a kitchen [Music] and a shower the showroom receives a lot of interested visitors [Music] there's a shower a toilet and a place to relax and there's a little kitchen area it could be okay even for three or four people to buy the price starts at around three million yen they can also be leased [Music] some come with wheels so they can be easily moved [Music] they can even be assembled according to your personal preferences soma yuki previously lived in an apartment with her parents but she decided to put in some hard work and turn a prefab house into a unique home i wanted to build and live in a small house made to my own specifications as it comes together it's really grown on me i love it working in her free time the whole process took two years and cost four million yen but eventually sulma had the home of her dreams [Music] these small spaces are a way for their residents to express themselves when i first came to tokyo um back in the 1970s i can remember walking around the city and thinking how ugly a lot of the buildings were that's office buildings and all kinds of buildings but even in residential neighborhoods the houses all looked pretty similar and they weren't very attractive that has changed enormously i mean a lot of the houses still are small but they're very kind of individualistic and people seem to have more of an interest in creating interesting looking buildings these days people enjoy so many different ways of life and lots of them want a home that fits their own lifestyle i think that has led to a wonderful variety of houses as a result of covet 19 and people getting used to working from home working remotely i often hear people saying that they don't really see a need to be living near central tokyo anymore they'd rather live further away and enjoy cleaner air for example what effect do you think that will have on the the tiny house syndrome as it were when it comes to houses many people are happy with the minimum they live in a small home and occasionally visit natural spaces but now they work remotely and have to find space for that small plots of land in urban areas are a lot harder to come by and one thing about urban spaces is that many of them are affected by strict regulations so i think we'll see more people living outside cities that's quite a big change absolutely in just one or two years we'll see a big difference thank you very much thank you very much you

Channel: NHK WORLD-JAPAN

Views: 610,194

Keywords:

Id: GugNoVWSdXY

Length: 28min 5sec (1685 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 12 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ThePlaneToLisbon]

Really informative! Thanks for posting!!

[u/LowerLevelCH]

Saved for later, thanks.

[u/ice_dune]

Damn, I've never seen small houses like this and didn't know they were so common in Japan

[u/Signals-Codes3-2]

Great video. I would love to visit Japan just to see the unique architecture.