Flickr photos by Ken McCown, a designer and professor of architecture and landscape design. This is a beautiful Japanese-influenced guest house by architect Paul Hayden Kirk (1914-1995) at the Bloedel Reserve in Seattle. It seems to be halfway between a Case Study house and a traditional Japanese farmhouse. Kirk, who produced many important buildings in Seattle, had built in the international style in the 1950s but began to feel it was “an imposition on the land” and he subsequently moved toward the warmer modernism evident here. The guest house is said to contain pieces by George Nakashima, and the beautiful japanese garden was designed by Dr. Koichi Kawana.

In the western world, 750 sq ft apartments can seem really small, even for just two people. The excerpt below is from an interesting article by Nold Egenter, a Swiss architectural anthropologist, on the cultural influences that allow the Japanese to live comfortably in what North Americans would consider small spaces. From the traditional peasant farmer’s wooden house, above, to contemporary tiny houses and apartments in contemporary Tokyo, Japanese living spaces have often measured less than 500 or 600 square feet, and yet they easily house a whole family. How is this possible?

Several years ago a study of the European Community concluded that the Japanese live in “rabbit cages.” The study was based essentially on statistical research which showed that the average dwelling space for a family in urban agglomerations hardly amounts to 40 square meters [430 sq. ft.]. Great astonishment! “Why do two out of three Japanese affirm that they like their life and that in general they are content?” In view of the fact that in Europe today a corresponding family needs roughly 100 square meters [1000 sq. ft.] – that is to say, two and a half times as much – one could ask the counter question: Do we waste space? Why does the average urban family in Japan manage with so much less dwelling surface and still feel comfortable? In such purely quantitative comparisons, it is often overlooked that spatial needs are closely related to the constructive design, and this is determined by the specific cultural tradition. To illustrate this point there is hardly any better example than that of Japan. Its architectural heritage and its dwelling culture developed under entirely different cultural and geographical conditions from those with which we are familiar.

Environmental and economic constraints are forcing us away from the sprawling way we have lived over the past century. If Negenter is right (to read his whole article, click at the end of this post), both architecture and dwelling habits have to change in order to make city living in small spaces more workable, and that obviously won’t happen overnight (though apparently it’s happening already). North American apartment, house and condo architecture would have to change, and so would our daily tools, appliances, expectations and habits. Nearly every design magazine and design blog now constantly revisits the question of how to live in fewer square feet, but perhaps what is needed is a much less piecemeal approach, and something that goes a little deeper than the “ten tips for living small” approach.

The houses shown here are larger than many Japanese apartments. They are spacious by Japanese standards but still tiny by North American standards. All are less than 1000 square feet inside, some much less, and all make use of previously unused empty urban lots. The tiny white Tokyo house at top is by Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima, whose most recent project is the New Museum in New York (great picture of her by Annie Liebowitz here). Directly above is the relatively large Bump house, (900 sq ft) and below is a tiny house by Sschemata (760 sq ft). I suspect they’re all white because it makes them seem larger. See Apartment Therapy on 300 sq. ft. houses, and see also a great post on increasing the perceived size of a house through Japanese building techniques – the videos show a number of tiny urban Japanese houses. Top ten ways Japanese live small is here. And a small article here by O.N. Gillespie, author of The Japanese House. North American example? Tumbleweed Tiny Houses.

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When we’ve seen too much shiny design and when we’re finding citified houses too chichi, too finishy, too much at a remove from the cabin, we find ourselves looking at pictures of handbuilt houses. People may dismiss these as “hippie houses,” but the evident Japanese, Scandinavian and other architectural influences actually ally these places with a certain strand of modernism. This bedroom’s use of textiles, the wool blanket on the patterned bedspread, the coarse but pleasing textures, the architecturally bold beams and trusses, the skylight and the generally abundant light, the sense that the trees outside are part of the room – maybe it’s because we both had contact with people who lived in houses like this when we were growing up, but this room is beautiful. Maybe not to everyone, but for us… well, you can almost smell the perfume of the wood in that room. This photo is from a great book from 1972 titled Handmade Houses. There are two relatively new books on handbuilt houses by Lloyd Kahn, who has probably  documented more of these Pacific coast houses than anyone, and we’re periodically going to feature what we think are the most interesting of these buildings.

The beautiful Sleeping Cottage on Lake Huron, Canada, by Mos, 2003-4. Many people may already have seen Mos’ Floating House on Lake Huron. Mos is an architectural firm that in their own words is “a collective of designers, architects, thinkers, and state-of-the-art weirdoes. The two principals, Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample, teach at Harvard University and Yale University while maintaining their practice. We work all over the world, designing private houses, institutional buildings, urban strategies, research, books, installations, and other projects that are less easily categorized.”