What a Condominium Can Do:
A General Solution for the Townscape

This building is a multi-unit housing complex with each unit under individual ownership. In Japan today, unlike a rental dwelling, a condominium tends to be considered an asset that will be sold later, and so the value of a space like a courtyard is rarely appreciated. For that reason, architects rarely make execution drawings for or supervise the construction of multi-unit dwellings. These tasks are usually performed by developers or design firms specializing in those functions.
Consequently, such dwellings are generally made up of units in a standardized style, like so many stacked boxes. The reality, then, is that the typical residential townscape is full of "architect-less" multi-unit buildings.

These buildings are called manshon in the Japanese real estate terminology. The term is used to imply associations with the English word mansion, but the two are worlds apart in terms of what they actually denote. Needless to say, architects never use the term manshon. They call condominiums bunjo shugo jutaku, "multi-unit dwellings subdivided for individual ownership." The fact that the same type of building thus has different designations indicates the ambiguous status of condominiums in Japan.

Condominiums are usually built according to strict conditions, peculiar to the manshon business, concerning rate of building volume to lot, construction cost, what specifications are spelled out in a catalogue, and so on. Of course, it may be necessary to build some that bend or break these rules, but such works are treated as minor exceptions and have little impact on the overall townscape created by many manshon buildings. Standardized dwellings continue to be erected in larger numbers.

My aim is to send out a new message about creating townscapes and living spaces, and to provide an architectural method anyone can use while fulfilling the same market economic conditions-though not all the conditions-met by conventional manshon buildings.

That does not mean that I am trying to accept the status quo uncritically. What I am saying is that, if one is critical of the current situation, one needs to present an alternative that is universally feasible. My proposed condominium might well appear, just as ordinary manshon buildings often do, in leaflet ads inserted into home-delivered newspapers. The important difference is that features generally not mentioned in such advertisements would be incorporated into multi-unit buildings of this new type.

This new approach would, I believe, make our townscapes a little more livable. The proposal may also occasion healthy debate on what constitutes a good townscape. Some of the possible solutions that would result from such debate may then become common solutions not just for Japanese cities but for cities in Asia and throughout the whole world.

Cities ought to be diverse. How a city looks should vary from one city to another. The commercial center of Shibuya, the residential area of Ogikubo, and the "Frontier" district on the Tokyo Bay waterfront should all differ from one another. There must be more than one solution to the problem of creating pleasing, livable townscapes.