AWC 18 – METROPOLITAN ARCHITECTURE

For the second incarnation of Metropolitan Architecture we went to Japan. There we found an array of buildings whose small size seemed capable of negotiating the scale between the interior and the metropolis. The result is a set of Japanese interiors, conceived at the time of economic exuberance. The small houses depicted here mediate between an individual city dweller and the shared infrastructure. The architecture is skin-thin, merely reduced to an envelope, a technical container that presents its house-like character as an afterthought. Therefore, it was somehow evident to imagine each of these particular pieces of architecture as possible building stones for the housing complexes we have been developing in the previous semester. Their peculiar inner complexity, scale and intimacy keep up the promise of a hyper individualised interior within the metropolis of the many. Is it possible to reinvent the totems of individual living as collections of specific interiors?