Paper short abstract:

The Japanese architect and planner, Nishiyama Uzo, helped shape housing and planning in Japan in the 20th century. Nishiyama developed housing concepts for the country that were applied in the postwar period. Analysis of his works provides insides into the changing concepts of well-being in Japan.

Paper long abstract:

The Japanese architect and planner, Nishiyama Uzo, helped shape housing and planning in Japan in the 20th century. Through extensive texts--as a theorist, commentator, and translator of foreign practices and as a visionary writer--Nishiyama developed housing concepts for the country that were applied in the postwar period. Nishiyama dedicated extensive writing to the theme of housing: housing planning (Jūtaku keikaku) and theory of residence (Jūkyo ron), and one each to reflections on urban and regional planning (Chiiki kūkan ron) and architecture (Kenchiku ron). Nishiyama resisted the idea that architecture was an elitist medium and instead focused on its social aspects, particularly in the architectural magazine DEZAM. Humanist approaches were at the core of his practice, as is clear as early as a 1948 article, “The Architecture of Humanism.”

Through abundant, detailed sketches of buildings and innovative analytical drawings and maps he created a careful analysis of Japan’s changing housing types over the centuries. His unique drawings offer detailed accounts of neighbourhoods, floorplans, sections, and construction details of traditional Japanese town houses, row houses, apartments, mansions, and wooden apartments in the large metropolises and villages alike. He also carefully examined changing lifestyles and everyday objects of traditional Japanese people from the earliest times of Japanese construction to post-war practices. As such, Nishiyama provided detailed and carefully documented insight into changing lifestyles, as through his drawings and photographs of traditional Japanese row houses, the nagaya.

Nishiyama’s theoretical models were based on a social approach to architecture and planning, with a focus on land use and land control rather than aesthetic preferences. Nishiyama translated his findings from history into housing proposals for the future. He argued for a separation of tatami rooms for sleeping from living/dining/kitchen areas (LDK) with wooden floors. The new organization of housing led to characteristic post-war housing projects: nLDK apartments, with n indicating the number of bedrooms added to the core of Living and Dining-Kitchen. Questions of aesthetics, the design and the scale of buildings, were also a key interest. Analysis of the writings and plans of Nishiyama provides insides into the changing concepts of well-being in Japan.