Devicology: Expanding fieldwork possibilities for architectural observations in inhabited interiors: the case of Japanese post-war mass housing

Tatiana Knoroz
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Abstract

Japanese mass housing from the 1960s has a colloquial nickname — danchi , which can be translated as “common land.” Originally celebrated by the public as a highly desirable living environment, danchi are now becoming a source of problems for the government. After briefly introducing the reader to the history of danchi , this paper will turn to investigate the interior lives of their current residents who stay hidden from the media attention behind dilapidating concrete walls and layers of social stigma. This work will attempt to propose a practical methodology on how to collect and interpret ethnographic materials from the apartment visits in relation to factual architectural knowledge. The data collected during the visits became the most controversial part of this research: in the spotlight is the abnormal inability of danchi residents to verbally admit their unsatisfactory living conditions that arises from the Japanese cultural characteristic of gaman , roughly translated as “perseverance”. Despite dire living conditions, clearly depressed inhabitants keep repeating that they cannot imagine living a better life. Balancing on the edge between ethnography and architecture, an innovative interior analysis method named “Devicology” (in homage to Wajiro Kon’s “ Modernology ”) can help us look beyond these modest replies by detecting “devices” —– intricate systems of unconventionally used furniture and smaller, less permanent objects, that are unconsciously assembled by the residents. These visually chaotic yet surprisingly functional structures are the only tool of the current dwellers to negotiate with the restricting standard apartment plans that were originally designed for a very different sector of the Japanese population. Beginning as an examination of behaviour patterns in a single apartment, Devicology has the potential to become a study of the collective unconsciousness of different people stuck in the same conditions with the same set of rules.
装置学:扩展在居住室内建筑观察的实地考察的可能性:日本战后大规模住宅的案例
从20世纪60年代开始,日本的大规模住宅有一个通俗的绰号——“团地”,可以翻译成“公共土地”。团池最初被公众视为一个非常理想的生活环境,现在却成为政府的一个问题来源。在向读者简要介绍了团池的历史之后,本文将转向调查他们现在的居民的内心生活,他们在破旧的混凝土墙和层层的社会污名背后隐藏着媒体的关注。这项工作将尝试提出一种实用的方法,关于如何从公寓访问中收集和解释与实际建筑知识相关的民族志材料。在访问期间收集的数据成为这项研究中最具争议的部分:在聚光灯下,丹地居民异常无法口头承认他们不满意的生活条件,这源于日本文化特征的gaman,大致翻译为“毅力”。尽管生活条件恶劣,但明显抑郁的居民不断重复说,他们无法想象过更好的生活。平衡民族志和建筑之间的边缘,一种名为“设备学”的创新室内分析方法(向瓦二郎的“现代学”致敬)可以帮助我们通过检测“设备”来帮助我们超越这些适度的回答,这些“设备”是由非常规使用的家具和较小的,不太永久的物体组成的复杂系统,由居民无意识地组装而成。这些视觉混乱但功能惊人的结构是当前居民与限制性标准公寓计划进行谈判的唯一工具,这些标准公寓计划最初是为日本人口的一个非常不同的部门设计的。从单个公寓的行为模式开始,设备学有可能成为对不同的人在相同条件下与相同规则的集体无意识的研究。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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