From ‘‘container’’ to ‘‘lifestyle:’’ Kazuyo Sejima, Sou Fujimoto and the destruction of the nuclear family box

Abstract

After the Second World War, Japan fell under the spell of a post-war ideology that popularized an ideal middle-class nuclear family. Mainstream housing options responded to this ideology with the introduction of a typical floorplan that contained a hierarchy akin to the nuclear family and stressed the need for individuality with multiple private (bed)rooms. By the mid-1960s, this nLDK-model — a layout system in which n came to indicate the number of rooms in addition to the Living room and the Dining-Kitchen space, had become a national code, not only creating homogeneity in the type of houses but also pushing one specific type of family. This study focuses on the two case-study houses of Kazuyo Sejima’s Bairin no Ie (2003) and Sou Fujimoto’s T-House (2005) to highlight a recent transformation in the conception of a house from a standard ‘container’ for the nuclear family into a particular house for a tangible lifestyle. By situating the two case studies in a socio-historical context, this paper aims to identify a redefinition of house-family relations that no longer relied on established notions of “wall” and “room,” but supported the free movement of people and the spontaneous formation of new relationships between rooms and functions.