ABSTRACT
Tokyo is a mix of high- to mid-rise office buildings, mid- to low-rise multi-unit residential buildings, and a topological and organic ground cover of low-rise, single-family detached houses, all competing together among narrow streets, winding alleyways, and a tangle of overhead power lines. Due to land constraints and expensive real estate costs, the majority of the single-family detached houses are small in scale and occupy a small footprint. Small-scale living is typical in Tokyo, and in the early 2000s an even smaller version of the single-family house emerged. The new type of single-family detached house is known as kyosho jutaku, which translates to micro house, often being less than 100 square metres (1,000 square feet), ingeniously designed to conform to a micro site, and has gained a growing appreciation both nationally and internationally. Kyosho jutaku is a fully detached building form, an autonomous object, found in Japan—a small and often odd-shaped size lot and building footprint.
