Local Community Area (LCA) Project: The Family and Village System as a Design Tool

Abstract

Local Community Area© project (LCA) was a theoretical experiment in architecture and social organization. It presented a new form of collective inhabitation that rejected atomization. Working in the Japanese context, the LCA explored architectural responses to the profound demographic and economic challenges facing Japan and the rest of the world. While open to western modernization, Japan has preserved many traditional aspects such as the notion of Ie (the family system) and the Mura (the village system). This has provided space for potentially innovative socio-economic paradigms and correlating architectural and urban experiments. Taking this into consideration, the aim of this article is to critically explore the theoretical case study offered by the LCA. As historical examples that were responses to their socio-cultural contexts, the LCA speculated on architecture not as an artistic or economic manifesto but as a tool for questioning the contemporary Japanese urban society.

Keywords:

• collectivist dwelling
• Local Community Area©
• Japan
• Riken Yamamoto
• shrinking cities
• ageing
• intergenerational living environment

Acknowledgements

Mr Alex Chan (Riken Yamamoto & Field Shop); Dr Toshiki Hirano (University of Tokyo); Mr Justin Hsu (Translation); Mr Chuji Kaseda (Translation); Ms Hiroko Katsu (University of Tokyo); Dr Robert G. Macdonald (LJMU); Ms Denise Parker (LJMU); Dr Emma Roberts (LJMU); Dr Grahame Smith (LJMU); Mr Masumi Ogawa (Translation).

Notes

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25. Riken Yamamoto interviewed by Davide Landi, September 22, 2017, Riken Yamamoto & Field Shop, Yokohama, Japan. Riken Yamamoto is the principal of Riken Yamamoto and Field Shop. The practice was established in 1973 after completing his masters studies in Architecture in 1971 at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts, and 2 years post – graduate/research studies at the University of Tokyo – Hara Laboratory where he wrote the thesis A Discussion on Thresholds (Shikimiron). Nowadays, Riken Yamamoto and Field Shop has branch offices in Zurich (Switzerland) and Beijing (China) besides the one in Yokohama (Japan) and counts several built projects in different western and eastern countries such as China, South Korea, Japan, and Switzerland.

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55. Riken Yamamoto, Local Community Area Principles (Tokyo: INAX Publishing, 2012); Riken Yamamoto, How to Make a City (Luzern: Architekturgalerie Luzern, 2014); Yosuke Hirayama and Richard Ronald, eds. Housing and Social Transition in Japan (London: Routledge, 2007).

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62. Shvidkovsky, ed., Building in the USSR 1917–1932, 61; The OSA, for instance, pursued an architecture that merged modern technique and technologies, the new economy and communal socialist forms of life. In this, a building, a complex, a district or a city acted as a Social Condenser. For the OSA, social condensers embedded future ways of life and their inhabitants could become confident with them; Kopp, Constructivist Architecture in the USSR, 4, 61.

63. Kopp, Constructivist Architecture in the USSR, 4, 61, 62; Curtis, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 4, 31, 41, 60.

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65. Riken Yamamoto, Riken Yamamoto (Tokyo: TOTO, 2011).

66. Ibid., 21, 65.

67. Riken Yamamoto, The Space of Power and the Power of Space: Designing Between Personal and State Spaces (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2015).

68. Yamamoto Interviewed by Davide Landi, 25.

69. Yamamoto, Riken Yamamoto, 65, 66; Yamamoto, Local Community Area Principles, 55.

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72. Yamamoto, Interviewed by Davide Landi, 25, 68.

73. Yamamoto Interviewed by Davide Landi, 25, 68, 72.

74. Yamamoto Interviewed by Davide Landi, 25, 68, 72, 73; Yamamoto, Local Community Area Principles, 55, 69.

75. Yamamoto, The Space of Power and the Power of Space: Designing Between Personal and State Spaces, 67.

76. Yamamoto Interviewed by Davide Landi, 25, 68, 72, 73, 74.

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78. Arendt, The Human Condition, 22, 24.

79. Yamamoto Interviewed by Davide Landi, 25, 68, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77.

80. Yamamoto Interviewed by Davide Landi, 25, 68, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 79.

81. Mark Mulligan, ed., Nurturing Dreams (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008); In 1964, the architect Fumihiko Maki wrote Investigations in Collective Forms. The collection of papers introduced strategic tools for the design of the built environment. The author identified three different paradigms of collective forms: “Compositional Forms, Megastructure and Group Forms.” Whereas in continuous evolution, the three paradigms always translate a system of generative elements already in space; Yamamoto Interviewed by Davide Landi, 25, 68, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 79, 80.

82. Yamamoto Interviewed by Davide Landi, 25, 68, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81.

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85. Yamamoto Interviewed by Davide Landi, 25, 68, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82.

86. Yamamoto Interviewed by Davide Landi, 25, 68, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85; Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, S, M, L, XL: OMA (New York, NY: The Monacelli Press, 1995); Over time, Rem Koolhaas has attempted to describe his works by facts. The book S, M, L, XL: OMA, for instance, pragmatically organizes Koolhaas’s architectural production only by size. No other communal patterns group them. In the same vein, Yamamoto, Hasegawa, Nakamura, and Fujimura organized their -groups only by size.

87. Yamamoto Interviewed by Davide Landi, 25, 68, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 86; Yamamoto, Riken Yamamoto, 65, 66, 69.

88. Yamamoto Interviewed by Davide Landi, 25, 68, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87.

89. Yamamoto Interviewed by Davide Landi, 25, 68, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 86, 87, 88.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Japan Endowment Foundation Committee (JEFC) [grant number 591 0417].

Notes on contributors

Davide Landi

Davide Landi is a registered Architect and Researcher. He obtained his Master’s Degree in Architectural-Engineering from the Università Politecnica Delle Marche, a second Master’s Degree in Architecture from the Accademia Adrianea di Architettura e Archeologia - Politecnico di Milano, and a PhD in Architecture from the Liverpool School of Art and Design. After his studies, Davide has worked as Architect and Researcher in a number of different countries including Japan, China, Italy and the United Kingdom. Now, he is a Lecturer in Architecture at the Department of Architecture and the Built Environment, UWE - Bristol. His writing on the notion of architectural types in contemporary culture and the ephemeral character of cities that the city’s recent digital turn emphasized have been published on international peer-reviewed journals.