A House is a Work of Art, Kazuo Shinohara

 'A House is a Work of Art,  Kazuo Shinohara'

all images and texts

 from 'the Japanese House; Architecture and Life after 1945', 2016, pp.119 - 137

A House is a Work of Art

In 1962, architect Kazuo Shinohara declared that 'a house is a work of art'. Japan was experiencing the benefits of an 'economic miracle' that saw it leap from post-war defeat to the world's second largest economy. His polemic was targeted at mainstream architecture's impulses towards industrialization, positing instead an architectural space that would critique prevailing worldviews. Originally a mathematician, Shinohara was one of the most influential theorists and practitioners in twentieth-century Japanese architecture. Until late in his career he focused exclusively on single-family houses which established the parameters of architectural debate for the succeeding generations of architects (many of whom he directly mentored in his role as Professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology). His architecture and writing form a complex body of work that foregrounds design's potential as a critical art form.

Shinohara's critical method is already evident at an early stage in his 1960 essay 'Nihon Dentoron' (Theory of Japanese Tradition), in which he considers many important historical buildings. His analysis attempts to return to the historical context in which the works were created, imagining their social and technological settings and demonstrating that contemporary assessments of tradition included various misunderstandings that had arisen over time. For example, a melancholic, windswept quality may seem like wabi-sabi,1) while a rectilinear, idiosyncratic composition of columns and beams may seem to anticipate Mondrian's grids. Shinohara asserts, however, that these impressions are anachronisms.

Using a wide range of buildings, Shinohara attempted to illustrate a 'method of Japanese architecture', discussing architectural composition, religious belief, and power, living amidst nature, authority, and irrationality. He identified an irrationality in Japanese architectural styles and spaces, and reasoned that the irrationality within dwellings can provide a potent means of resisting the fragmentation of the psyche and the community resulting from the relentless pursuit of rationality.

Shinohara's strongest examples concern the space of rural minka, the traditional homes of commoners, particularly the role of the doma, the spacious, earth-floored entrance areas where residents work. He characterized the doma as a 'non-open space’, in contrast to the open verandas and garden pavilions of aristocratic dwellings. It was also a space that, unlike aristocratic residences, was associated with production and labour. According to the architect, the opposition between the blackness of the minka's sooty columns and log beams and the whiteness of the aristocratic house's sawn Japanese cypress columns and Japanese cedar boards is reflected in a parallel opposition between the practice of those who performed their own housework and tended fires in their living rooms and the authority of those who entrusted the work to others. Shinohara analyses the points at which these oppositional categories blend together, giving rise to multiple architectural housing types in Japanese architecture. House in White (1961) can be understood as deconstructing this opposition, recomposing the respective characteristics of minka and aristocratic dwellings through an unprecedented combination of abstract whiteness and non-open space. Shinohara did not concern himself with functional theory, which was hotly debated in the 1960s in relation to small houses. Instead, he dealt with the question of whether an individual living in the present could design a house within the critical space of tradition.

For the architect, the cube that emerged in the House in White's main room was a 'personal cube', distinct from the rational cubes of modernism. The house forms a turning point between what Shinohara considered his 'first style', characterized by dwellings in dialogue with tradition, and his antithetical ‘second style. This phase was predominated by cubes and  ‘fissures', in an attempt to express a dry, inorganic 'anti-space'. 

With 1974's Tanikawa Villa, his design practice took yet another turn, instigated by the 'slippage' between its exposed dirt floor and the geometric structural system of columns and roof. He accepted this assemblage of naked elements as a 'savage machine' in which the juxtaposition of contradicting factors could produce new meanings. This savage machine propelled his third phase, in which his interest in chaos and savagery led him to actively pursue new connections with the city. In Tokyo residences such as House in Uehara (1976) and House under High-Voltage Lines (1981), he amplified the moments of slippage, conflict, and anarchy.

Despite the radical shifts in his practice, Shinohara's belief in the house as a work of art remained a constant throughout his career. Behind it lies a perception that architectural production has become increasingly industrialized, large in scale, and controlled by corporate forces. In contrast, the design of individual houses remained relatively unproductive, economically speaking, and could therefore be recognized as art. He situates house design as a form of cultural criticism that directly participates in cultural creation and is unrelated to social production. With his belief that ‘freedom appears before us', Shinohara has inspired generations of younger architects who, at the fledgling stages of their careers, have no choice but to concentrate on the design of small houses.



1). Wabi-sabi is an aesthetic ideal privileging simplicity, imperfection, and the passing of time. It is often considered a uniquely Japanese aesthetic, both internationally and in Japan.