ABSTRACT
In 1961, the Metabolist Noboru Kawazoe envisioned that an increase in free time for Japanese people would allow a cultural flourishing in domestic life, a blossoming embodied by what he calls the “‘Sunday carpenter’ of the Do-it-yourself persuasion.” Such people would have “their own freedom of expression” in building their dwellings, a freedom to be enabled, Kawazoe thought, by stacked plots of “artificial land.” Introduced by Takamasa Yosizaka in 1954 as a solution to Japan’s postwar housing crisis, artificial land is arguably the core concept of Metabolism. Yet freedom of construction driven by residents’ desires is noticeably absent from today’s impression of Metabolism, a movement more closely associated with expressions of national prestige and large prefabricated components. This chapter aims to adjust this impression through examining a participatory housing tradition within and interwoven with Metabolism. Instead of a technocratic salaryman occupying a capsule, the Sunday carpenter offers an alternate avatar for the movement, a figure representative of a person or people willing and able (with the help of architects) to make and change their environments for living. Analyzed through a handful of Japanese housing initiatives, resident decision-making is put forward as a vital condition for housing’s democratic rationalization.
