WHAT IS A HOUSE FOR住宅所为何
WHAT IS A HOUSE FOR住宅所为何House byTalk withInfo

Filipe Magalhães: The limbo in which we, fala, operate - between the lack of interest of the client and the excess of ambition and enthusiasm on our side - is very similar to the situation Itsuko Hasegawa was confronted with, while designing her first houses in the 70s.

YOU PUBLISHED THE DRAWINGS AND PHOTOS OF THE HOUSE IN KAKIO IN YOUR RECENT BOOK ON JAPANESE HOUSES. FROM ALL THE BUILDINGS YOU ANALYSED, WHAT MADE YOU MAKE THIS CHOICE?

It is a house built with very little resources. It’s a banal construction of a boring brief. It’s a discrete, cheap, suburban house. However, the discrepancy between what we could call a very unappealing exterior and a phenomenal interior composition - not in a tectonic sense, but in a spatial and symbolic sense, is surprising. It is almost as if Itsuko designed a house that disappears from the outside on purpose, in order to protect the treasure that hides within. 

It has two and a half levels - a social level, a so-called private level, and an attic level. The social level has some program in one corner and a big L - shaped living room in the other corner. The same structure applies to the private level, with some bedrooms in the first corner and a big master bedroom in the second corner.

My reading, however, tells me that the conventional understanding of this house - a social part, a private part, a bedroom, a living room, a space for family members, a space for guests - all these words that we usually use to define the daily life of a house, turn out to be completely irrelevant and insufficient to grasp the real quality present.

If you take all the furniture away from the plans, you end up with a house based on two games - a game between the main and the secondary spaces on each level, and a game between the outside rectangular shape and the inside curved shape, which create important differences and interdependence in the L-shaped rooms on each level. You discover a play of angles, surfaces and light that make sense, independent of any use. It is remarkable that there are no material or structural special effects: there are just walls, windows, ceilings, and floors. Everything is out of white painted plywood. In this sense, it is the work of a master, whereby she truly understood the tools and limitations present and used them only to her advantage. All this is just fantastic.

IN THE TEXT ITSUKO HASEGAWA WROTE ABOUT THE HOUSES SHE BUILT IN THE 70’ („MY WORK OF THE SEVENTIES” IN SD 04/85) SHE SURPRISINGLY UNDERLINES HER INTEREST IN „THE CONCERNS OF LIVING RATHER THAN ABSTRACT METHODS OF ARTISTIC EXPRESSION”. THE HOUSE IN KAKIO, AS YOU STARTED TO EXPLAIN, IS DEFINITELY NOT ONLY ABOUT THE „CONCERNS OF LIVING”.

This entire generation wrote a lot about the mundane conditions in which they had to operate. Although they were strongly influenced by the ideas of Shinohara, they had to work in the shadow of the Metabolist movement and the emerging prefab house industry. Both praised standardised, repetitive dwellings, produced in huge quantities. The group Itsuko Hasegawa belonged to, were the grunge kids, the ones that had only tiny houses to deal with. They struggled a lot for what they believed was right and with the dilemma: „should we even try to be artists or should we be service providers” was very present in all of them. 

Their ambitions, sensibilities and intellectual preparation were inspired by Shinohara’s „house as a work of art”, but their clients were very often not at all interested in architecture, had limited budgets, and tight schedules.

Itsuko Hasegawa worked for Shinohara at the university and knew his clients, who usually came from the higher layers of the society. She was living in both worlds - the elite, and the ordinary reality of a young architect in Japan. She was very conscious of the schizophrenic situation many of her colleagues had to find an answer to. To remain in practice, they were forced to rethink the strategies learned from Shinohara, as his school and methods turned out to be impossible to apply in the majority of cases.

Everything that came to happen in Itsuko Hasegawa’s career was triggered by this contradiction. What she quickly accepted was that maybe her vocabulary, her language, could not be as pure as Shinohara’s. Maybe she could not be as aggressive as he was. She had to create a certain balance, invent games and systems in order to achieve her goals as an author.

Even though she wrote about her doubts on the possibility of a house being a work of art, in Kakio she dodged the bullets, walked between the drops of rain, and found a way to do exactly that, almost pornographically making a house a work of art - without even boasting about it.

WHAT WAS HER ARTISTIC GOAL?

Itsuko Hasegawa never calls the L-shaped spaces bedroom and living room. Instead, she calls them „main room one” and „main room two.” This tells us a lot, because the rooms in the service block, all have names like kitchen, bathroom, washroom, or bedroom. L-rooms remain „main rooms”. It suggests that a house is not about specific uses. It is about space. 

Secondary rooms are there for pragmatic reasons and eventually help to frame what is important. The only published picture of the service block is the staircase - a fundamental device to force you to go through a compressed space, and makes you almost forget the experience you had at ground floor before accessing the second L-shaped space on the first floor.

The ground floor L-shape room is divided in two. There’s a side with a dining table, facing the kitchen and the other which is always empty, both in photos and publications. You assume it to be the entrance space, a space to pass through, a kind of „washing room” where you get ready for what the house is going to reveal to you. In the corner, Itsuko Hasegawa designed a few pieces of fixed furniture. We have a classic triad - entrance, living, dining. All these functions are related to what happens in the service block and have a reasonable surface.

In a normal house, the living room is the biggest space. In this house, the upstairs master bedroom is almost the same area. Both in photos and drawings, the first floor L-shaped space is furnished with only two single beds, orientated on one side of the room. The rest of the room is just empty. At the end of each side of the L-shape, there is a desk, as if this space was meant for both sleeping and working. There is no other furniture. It is a kind of subversive twin of the room below. The floor is very dark, but all the walls are white. The doors have flush white frames ready to fully melt into the white wall surface. The plastic appeal of the natural light, that comes from windows not immediately visible, appears from the side, and hits the pitched ceiling, casting a shadow on the curve, is outstanding.

At ground floor, she had a very clear intention regarding what we can call a traditionalist perspective on program in the social space of a house.

Upstairs instead, there is clearly too much area for a standard bedroom, so the room automatically becomes something else. Thanks to this disproportion and peculiarity Itsuko Hasegawa demonstrates that function it is not the main motivation in her design, but something of another nature, something symbolic.

YOU USE THE WORD „SYMBOLIC” IN REGARD TO SPACE. WHAT DO YOU REFER TO?

I think the symbolic aspect has to do with rationality. A truly symbolic space or element puts you in a position to wonder why it is there, and why like this? It has an appeal of something out of ordinary, not easy to classify, a bit strange. It makes you interpret, think and discuss beyond the functional or technical descriptions.

As far as I am concerned, the way of thinking about functions in the classical sense, in which we think of a house in terms of an entrance hall, a living room, a bedroom, etc. is a very outdated perspective. In our practice we are looking for arrangements in which it is impossible to discern clear pragmatic answers. We introduce vague, abstract notions in order to find an anchor that will trigger some sort of inspired discussion - like the one we are having today.

What the Japanese references showed us during our research, was exactly the importance of blurring the boundaries between the real and the unreal in the sense of giving an alternative, deconstructing the stereotypes about how to live in a house. We want to be part of this family and look for the „thing” that we don’t know how to define very well. We call it a symbolic, or semiotic quality of space and elements.

WHAT DO YOU THINK PUSHED JAPANESE ARCHITECTS TO BECOME EXTRAORDINARILY SENSITIVE TO THIS QUALITY?

We can speculate on that. Japanese language has several symbols to define what we describe with one word. They have several symbols to define white, background etc. Understanding an empty white background from an European perspective is pretty clear, in Japan they would want to clarify how empty, which white, etc. The same thing applies to a column. We have words like column, post, pillar - a few definitions that pretty much refer to the same thing. The Japanese have numerous definitions for what a column means, depending on its position. If it’s in the centre of a structure, it has a specific name, if it’s on the perimeter, it has another If it is in what we could call a low-class building, it has a certain sense, if it is an important symbolic building, like a temple, it has another. It is deeply rooted in Japanese culture to be specific about the meaning of each word and as a consequence of each object.

However, what I believe to be the most important factor is that in this period architects not only intimately arrived at certain conclusions, but also theorised tremendously about their own work. All of these architects wrote and depicted what they were doing in texts published in several magazines. Shinkenchiku in the 80’ had a circulation of one hundred thousand prints every month. The general population was receiving theory from Mayumi Miyawaki, Kazunari Sakamoto and Itsuko Hasegawa among others at regular intervals. An ordinary citizen would probably read one of these texts once in a while. There was a huge diffusion of information that was not just photographic. Architectural theory was reaching everyone.

To a large extent, I think, the cliche of contemporary Japanese architecture, comes from the fact that this does not happen anymore. Last time Toyo Ito wrote a relevant text was probably 30 years ago. The current generation of star architects in Japan have moved in a very different direction. Even if you mention the research of Atelier Bow Wow, it is very different from what happened in Itsuko’s times. Nowadays, architects like Bow Wow are more interested in the urban scale than in the theory of architectural space making. 

Japanese Architecture in the 70’s and 80’s was a moment created by economic and social issues which were then supported by an insanely intense publication frenzy, that in turn allowed a whole generation of architects to stop, think, experiment, read, communicate with each other and consequently, reach the masses. Miyawaki wrote a beautiful text, concluding, that all this effort was aimed at changing the world. There was a combat spirit and a mission. Their enemies at some point stopped being the Metabolists and started to be prefab houses. Similarly, to the impressionists who had to fight photography, architects had to find the energy to fight back, as something was trying to replace them.

The period in which the house we are discussing was built was a period when everything was happening very fast. The price of land was increasing drastically. Some of these houses lasted just a couple of years because the ever-increasing price of land meant they could be replaced right away. The architects knew that their houses were not meant to last. All this allowed Japanese clients to be a bit more flexible and allow more unconventional layouts. In Europe we built for a lifetime. They built for a decade. This makes a huge difference.

It’s very interesting to look at this phenomenon at a macro scale. The publications were really a game changer. Today, the prefab housing that still exists in Japan is deeply influenced by the design these architects theorised 40 years ago. Neither Casabella nor Domus managed to do that in Europe. All of these Japanese publications were contributing to this in Japan.

COMING BACK TO THE HOUSE IN KAKIO, WHAT DO YOU THINK WAS NOT POSSIBLE TO TRANSMIT IN PRESS?

There’s something that the publications of the house never managed to do, which was to explore the acoustic aspect of the house. If you imagine that you just entered, and there are five people having a dinner where the table is drawn, you don’t see them, but you hear them. And if you assume it’s a dinner time, you probably don’t have the natural light coming from the sides, you have some sort of artificial light near the table. You’re going to see the shadows of these people spread all over this white curved surface. In the publications the photos are never inhabited, they are staged and do not show the dynamic components of these spaces.

This is also an interesting point of discussion between Alvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura. Many years ago, at the school in Porto, they were debating if a house in front of the sea, should have a small window or a big window. They disagreed. Souto de Moura felt you should see the whole sea from the room. Siza instead said, no, you should make it small so that people are motivated to go to see the sea. It needs to become something you have to make an effort for.

I would say this Japanese generation agreed with Siza, thinking in terms of hints that attract and provoke you to make you move. I think the play of shadows and the social behaviour inside this house would have a profound effect, very different from what we see published.

WOULD YOU CALL THE HOUSE IN KAKIO A WHITE HOUSE OR A BLACK HOUSE?

I wouldn’t call it either. I think the white here is just circumstantial. It’s not a polemic white like the second style houses of Shinohara. It’s not an abstract white. More than anything else, it’s a means to an end. If you look at it in a timeline, the house in Kakio is built between the end of the second style of Shinohara and the beginning of the third style. I think this white is a white that just liberates something to happen, like in Tanikawa house, where the white makes the tree shaped columns and the sloped earth floor the protagonists of the space. 

I think the white in Kakio and the dark carpet on the floor are necessary, so that you understand the light effects coming from two windows and the double height light source on the ground floor.

IN JAPAN, OFTEN YOU HAVE A WINDOW THAT DOESN’T HAVE A VIEW, IT GIVES ONLY A LITTLE BIT OF LIGHT BECAUSE THE LOTS ARE SO TIGHT. WHAT DO YOU THINK MIGHT BE AN ARGUMENT TO DESTROY THE COMMON STEREOTYPE OF A WINDOW AND CONCEIVE IT AS SOMETHING OTHER THAN A DEVICE TO PURELY LOOK OUT OF?

There’s a lot of theory about urban chaos of Japan and the relationship between architecture and the city written by different architects from the Metabolists to Sou Fujimoto. All of these generations were dealing with the very dense, metabolic urban condition and most often they designed windows just because the building needed to have them for light and ventilation, not because of whatever the window was going to reveal.

A window is one of the few elements that links a specific house to its specific place. The architects of this generation didn’t want it. 

The photos of the windows in the house in Kakio, show them burned - the outside becomes just white. It’s another way of speaking about the autonomy of a house theorised by Shinohara - the house has no site, it does not belong to the context, it can be anywhere. If a window doesn’t give you a view it certainly helps to speak about this intention. 

In house in Kakio the windows cut in the curved wall are facing the window in the outside wall, that gives some natural light to the main room in the groundfloor. However, I don’t think that Itsuko Hasegawa cared if the angle allowed a person to see through both windows at the same time. That’s not the topic at all. 

All of the windows are squares, perfectly framed. They are more like paintings on the wall rather than actual anchors to the context that surrounds the house.

IS THERE ANY WAY IN WHICH YOU WOULD USE THIS HOUSE DIFFERENTLY? DO YOU HAVE SOME KIND OF DREAM OF HOW YOU WOULD MAKE THIS HOUSE YOUR OWN?

I wouldn’t put my bed in any of the main spaces. I would probably place it in the service part, and I could imagine the top level to be the space where I work, and the bottom level the space where I relate with other people, for example. Two main rooms could be for instance a room for the summertime and the room for the winter or a space to read and a space to work or to listen to music. I think the L-shaped rooms are too intense to just sleep in them. I think they have qualities and characteristics that extrapolate them to another level, a symbolic one. I could imagine them to be completely empty and just to walk through them once in a while. They have the fissure space quality of Shinohara’s second style houses, where you put a chair and it’s enough.

To me, the biggest provocations in this house are those two mattresses in the photos and plans. By putting the two beds there, I think, Itsuko Hasegawa is poking the „service provider versus artist” dilemma. She’s saying - “this is what I had to do: look how far I went to achieve what I wanted”. 

IS THERE SOMETHING THAT REMAINS FOR YOU A MISTERY IN THE HOUSE IN KAKIO?

At the time when house in Kakio was built, Shinohara was working on Uehara House and Tanikawa House. He played with structure, symbolic structure. Itsuko Hasegawa also made houses that used structure to create spaces, for example, the house in Yaizu 2 - the structure is the house and vice versa. However, House in Kakio is one where the structure is pretty much disguised. You don’t know where the beams or columns are, except for one very specific moment, you can only see in one photo from the attic space - there is a column that appears and touches the roof in the point of convergence of all the surfaces. It doesn’t show up in the other levels. There’s no writing, nothing that refers to it. Itsuko Hasegawa published one specific photo of it in an international publication. She decided for some reason to reveal to the outside world that almost unperceiveble moment where the column appears. In the time when the positioning of structure and the expression of structure was so relevant, she reveals it only in the least important, and most difficult to access space. It leaves me wondering, what was she thinking about.

18.09.2021

菲利普・麦哲伦：我们Fala工作室这种，在甲方兴趣的缺乏，和我们雄心和热情的过度中运作的处境，和长谷川逸子在70年代设计她的第一批住宅时遇到的情况非常相似。

你在最近出版的《日本住宅》一书中发表了柿生的住宅的图纸和照片。在你分析的所有建筑中，是什么让你做出了这个选择？

这是一个用极少的资源建造的住宅。它是一个无聊指示下的平庸构筑物，一个离散的、廉价的、郊区的住宅。然而，在相当不讨喜的外观和惊人的内部构成之间形成的差异——不是在建构意义上，而是在空间和象征意义上——是令人惊讶的。这几乎就像长谷川逸子故意设计了一个消失于外界的住宅，以保护隐藏在内的珍宝。

它有两层半——一个社交层，一个所谓的私人层，以及一个阁楼层。社交层的一角有一些功能，另一角有一个L型的大起居室。同样的结构适用于私人层，第一个角落有一些卧室，第二个角落有一个大的主卧。

然而，我从中读到的是，对这所住宅的传统理解——社交部分、私人部分、卧室、起居室、家庭成员的空间、客人的空间——所有这些我们通常用来定义住宅日常生活的词，结果是毫不相关且不足以去把握这个住宅真正呈现出来的品质。

如果从平面图上拿掉所有家具，你会得到一所基于两个游戏的住宅——每一层的主要空间和次要空间之间的游戏，以及外部矩形和内部曲线之间的游戏，这在每一层的L形房间中创造了重要的差异和依存。你会发现角度、表面和光线的把玩是有意义的，与任何用途无关。值得注意的是，这里没有任何材料或结构上的特殊效果：只有墙壁、窗户、天花和地板。所有东西都是用刷白的胶合板制成的。在这个意义上，它是一个大师的作品，在此她真正理解目前的工具和限制，并只使用它们来发挥她的优势。所有这一切都很精彩。

在长谷川逸子写的关于她在七十年代建造的住宅的文章中（“我的七十年代作品”，载于SD 04/85），她令人惊讶地强调了她对 “生活的关注而不是抽象的艺术表达方法 “的兴趣。柿生的住宅，在你开始的解释中，绝对不仅仅是在于 “生活的关注”。

这整整一代人写了很多文章关于世俗的状况，他们必须运作于其中。尽管他们受到筱原思想的强烈影响，但他们不得不在新陈代谢运动和新兴的预制房屋行业的阴影下工作。两者都推崇标准化的、重复性的住宅，并大量生产。长谷川逸子所属的群体是颓废派（grunge）的小孩，那些只有小房子可以处理的人。他们为自己认为正确的事情做了很多挣扎，并陷入两难境地：”我们应该甚至尝试成为艺术家，还是应该成为服务提供者”，这在他们所有人身上都很常见。

他们的雄心壮志、情感和智识准备都受到筱原 “作为艺术作品的住宅 “的启发，但他们的客户往往对建筑一点都不感兴趣，预算有限，时间紧迫。

长谷川逸子在大学里为筱原工作，认识他的客户，他们通常来自于上流社会。她生活在两个世界里——精英阶层，以及日本年轻建筑师的普通现实。她非常清楚她的许多同侪必须找到对这种精神分裂的状况的答案。为了保持实践，他们不得不重新思考从筱原那里学到的策略，因为他的学派和方法在大多数情况下都无法适用。

长谷川逸子职业生涯中发生的一切，都是由这个矛盾引发的。她很快接受的是，也许她的词汇，她的语言，不可能像筱原那样纯粹。也许她不能像他那样积极进取。她必须建立某种平衡，创造游戏和系统，以实现她作为一个作家的目标。

尽管她在书中写道，她对房子成为艺术品的可能性表示怀疑，但在柿生的住宅中，她躲过了子弹，在雨滴间行走，并找到了一种方法，几乎像情色画般地将房子变成了艺术品——甚至没有对此夸夸其谈。

她的艺术目标是什么？

长谷川逸子从未将L型空间称为卧室和起居室。相反，她称它们为 “主房间一 “和 “主房间二”。这告诉我们很多，因为服务区的房间，都有厨房、浴室、盥洗室或卧室这类名称。L型房间仍然是 “主要房间”。这表明，住宅不是关于具体的用途。它是关于空间的。

次要房间的存在是出于实用的原因，并最终帮助框定重要的东西。服务区唯一公布的照片是楼梯——一个迫使你穿过压缩空间的基本设施，并使你几乎忘记了在进入二楼第二个L形空间之前在一楼的经历。

一楼的L型房间被一分为二。一边是餐桌，面向厨房，另一边在照片和出版物中都是空的。你假设它是入口空间，一个通过的空间，一种 “洗涤室”，在那里你为住宅将要呈现给你的东西做好准备。在角落里，长谷川逸子设计了几件固定的家具。我们有一个经典的三要素——入口、起居、餐厅。所有这些功能都与在服务体块内发生的事情有关，并且有一个合理的完成面。

在普通的住宅里，起居室是最大的空间。而在这所住宅中，楼上的主卧室几乎是相同的面积。在照片和图纸中，二楼的L形空间只布置了两张单人床，放在房间的一侧。房间的其余部分都是空的。在L型的每一侧的尽头，都有一张书桌，似乎这个空间既是用来睡觉的，也是用来工作的。没有其他家具。它是下面房间的一种颠覆性的孪生。地板很暗，但所有的墙壁都是白色的。门有着齐平的白色门框，妥帖的融化在白色的墙面上。可塑性很强的自然光，源自无法立即可见的窗户，从侧面显现，打在倾斜的天花板上，在曲面上落下投影，非常卓越。

在一楼，她有一个非常明确的意图，从所谓传统主义的视野出发，对住宅的社交空间进行编排。

而在楼上，对于一个标准的卧室来说，显然面积太大，所以房间自动成为了其他什么。得益于这种不相称和特殊性，长谷川逸子表明，功能不是她设计的主要动机，而是一些其他性质的东西，象征性的事物。

你在谈到空间时使用了 "象征性 "一词。你指的是什么？

我认为象征性的层面与合理性有关。一个真正的象征性的空间或元素让你想知道它为什么在那里，为什么是这样的？它有一种超乎寻常的吸引力，不容易分类，有点奇怪。它使你在功能或技术描述之外进行解释、思考和讨论。
就我而言，古典意义上从功能来思考的方式，即我们从入口大厅、起居室、卧室等方面来思考一所住宅，是一种非常过时的观点。在实践中，我们在寻找布局，其中不可能辨别出明确的实用性答案。我们引入模糊的、抽象的概念，以便找到一个锚，引发某种启发式的讨论——就像我们今天这样。
在我们的研究中，日本的案例向我们展示的，正是模糊真实和非真实之间界限的重要性，在这个意义上给出选择，解构了关于如何生活在一个住宅里的刻板观念。我们想成为这个家族的一部分，寻找我们不知道如何准确定义的“东西”。我们称之为空间和元素的象征性的，或符号学的品质。

你认为是什么推动了日本建筑师对这种品质变得异常敏感？

我们可以对此进行推测。日语有好几个字符来定义我们用一个词描述的东西。他们有一些字符来定义白色、背景等。从欧洲的角度理解一个空的白色背景是很清楚的，在日本，他们会想澄清如何空，哪种白色等等。同样的事情也适用于柱子，我们有像column，post，pillar这样的词——几个释义几乎指的是同一件事。日本人对柱子意味着什么有许多界定，这取决于它的位置。如果它在一个结构的中心，它有一个特定的名称，如果它在周边，它有另一个。如果它在所谓低级别的建筑中，它有某种定义，如果它是一个重要的象征性建筑，如寺庙，它有另一个。对每个词的意义以及作为每个物体的结果，它在日本文化中是根深蒂固的。
然而，我认为最重要的因素是，在这个时期，建筑师们不仅密切地得出了某些结论，而且还对自己的成果进行了巨大的理论化工作。所有这些建筑师都在一些杂志上发表文章，描述他们正在做的事情。80年代的《新建筑》每月有十万份的发行量。普通民众定期收到宮胁檀、坂本一成和长谷川逸子等人的理论。一个普通公民可能偶尔会读到其中的一篇文章。这有着一个巨大的信息扩散，不仅仅是影像的问题。建筑理论在当时普及到了每个人。

在很大程度上，我认为，当代日本建筑的陈词滥调，源自于于这种情况不再发生了。上一次伊东丰雄写相关的文章可能是在30年前了。日本这一代的明星建筑师已经朝着一个非常不同的方向发展。即使你提到犬吠工作所（Atelier Bow Wow）的研究，也与逸子时代的情况大不相同。现在，像犬吠工作室这样的建筑师对城市尺度更感兴趣，而不是建筑空间制作的理论。
70年代和80年代的日本建筑处于一个由经济和社会议题创造的时刻，然后由疯狂的出版狂潮支持，这反过来又让整整一代的建筑师停下来，思考，实验，阅读，相互交流，从而抵达大众。宫胁写了一篇漂亮的文章，结论是，所有这些努力都是为了改变世界。有一种战斗精神和使命感。他们的敌人在某种程度上不再是新陈代谢主义，而开始是预制住宅。类似于印象派必须与摄影作斗争，建筑师必须找到能量来反击，因为有些东西正试图取代他们。
我们讨论的这所住宅的建造时期是一个一切都发生得非常快的时期。土地的价格在急剧上升。有些住宅只留存了几年，因为不断上涨的土地价格意味着它们可以马上被取代。建筑师们知道，他们的住宅并不意在持久。所有这些使得日本业主可以更灵活一些，允许更多非常规的布局。在欧洲，我们的建筑为一生而建。他们是以十年为单位而建的。这就有了巨大的区别。

从宏观上看这种现象是非常有趣的。这些出版物确实改变了游戏规则。今天，在日本仍然存在的预制房屋设计深受这些建筑师40年前的理论的影响。在欧洲，Casabella和Domus都没能做到这一点。所有这些日本出版物都对日本的这一切做出了贡献。

回到柿生的住宅，你认为有什么是无法在媒体上传播的？

有一件事是住宅的出版物无法做到的，那就是探索住宅的声学层面。如果你想象你一进入，有五个人正在描绘餐桌的位置吃饭，你看不到，但能听到他们。而你假设这是晚餐时间，可能没有自然光从侧面射来，你在桌子附近有某种人造光。你会看到这些人的影子遍布在这个白色的弧形曲面上。在出版物中，这些照片里从来没有人居住，它们是布景式的，没有显示出这些空间的动态成分。
这也是阿尔瓦罗-西扎和艾德瓦尔多客苏托客德客莫拉讨论的一个有趣的点。许多年前，在波尔图的学校里，他们争论于，在海边的住宅应该有一个小窗户还是一个大窗户。他们意见不一。苏托-德-莫拉认为你应该从房间里看到整个大海。西扎却说，不，你应该把它弄小，这样人们才会有动力去看海。它需要成为你必须努力去做的事情。
我想说的是，这一代日本人同意西扎的观点，考虑用暗示来吸引和激发你，使你行动。我认为这所住宅中对影子和社会行为的把玩会产生强烈的效果，与我们在出版物中看到的非常不同。

你会将柿生的住宅称为是白住宅还是黑住宅？

两个我都不会说。我认为这里的白色只是间接的。它不像筱原第二样式住宅那样的论战性（polemic）的白色，这不是一种抽象的白色。更重要的是，它是达到目的的一种手段。如果你从时间轴上看，柿生的住宅是建造于筱原第二样式结束和第三样式开始之间。我认为这种白色解放了一些事物的发生，就像在谷川之家里，白色使树形的柱子和倾斜的夯土地面成为空间的主角。
我认为柿生的住宅的白色和地面上的深色地毯是必要的，这样你就能理解一楼中来自两个窗户和通高的光源的光线效果。

在日本，通常你有一个没有风景的窗户，它只提供一点点的光线，因为地块非常狭窄。你认为有什么理由能打破窗户的常规刻板观念，把它构想为一个单纯看室外的设施以外的东西？

有很多关于日本城市乱象的理论，以及从新陈代谢派到藤本壮介的一系列不同建筑师写的建筑与城市的关系。所有这几代人都在处理非常密集的、新陈代谢着的城市状况，大多数情况下，他们设计窗户只是因为建筑需要有窗户来采光和通风，而不是因为窗户会揭示出什么。
窗户是为数不多的将特定房屋与特定地点联系起来的元素之一。这一代的建筑师们并不希望如此。

柿生的住宅中窗户的照片显示它们被销毁了——外面变得只是白色。这是谈论筱原理论中住宅的自主性的另一种方式——这个住宅没有基地，它不属于文脉（context）中，它可以在任何地方。如果一个窗户不给你视野，这当然有助于谈论这个意图。
在柿生的住宅里，在弧形墙上开的窗户正对着外墙的窗户，这给底层的主要房间带来了一些自然光。然而，我认为长谷川逸子并不关心这个角度是否能让人同时看到两个窗户，这完全不是议题。
所有的窗户都是方形的，有完美的窗框。它们更像是墙上的画，而不是实际连接周边文脉的锚点。

你会有什么不同的方式使用这所住宅吗？你是否有某种使这所住宅成为自己的住宅的梦想？

我不会把我的床放在任何一个主要空间里。我可能会把它放在服务部分，我可以想象顶层是我工作的空间，而底层是我与其他人相处的空间，比如说。两个主要的房间可以是例如夏天的房间和冬天的房间，或者一个阅读的空间和一个工作的空间或听音乐的空间。我认为L型房间太有张力了，不能只在里面睡觉。我认为它们拥有的品质和特点，将其推到另一个层次，一个象征性的层次。我可以想象它们是完全空的，我只是偶尔走过。它们有筱原的第二样式住宅中龟裂空间（fissure space）的品质，在那里你放一把椅子就够了。
对我来说，这所住宅里最大的挑战是照片和图纸上的那两张床垫。通过把这两张床放在那里，我认为长谷川逸子是在挑衅 "服务提供者vs艺术家 "的困境。她在说——"这是我必须做的：看看我为了实现我想要的东西走了多远"。

在柿生的住宅中有什么东西对你来说仍然是个谜吗？

在柿生的住宅被建造的时候，筱原正在建造上原通住宅和谷川之家。他把玩的是结构，象征性的结构。长谷川逸子也做了一些用结构来创造空间的房子，例如，焼津的住宅2——结构就是住宅，反之亦然。然而，柿生的住宅是一个结构被隐藏得很好的作品。你不知道梁或柱子在哪里，除了一个非常特殊的瞬间，你只能从阁楼里的一张照片中看到——在所有表面的交汇点，有一根柱子出现并接触到屋顶。它没有出现在其他表面。没有任何文字，或其他东西提到它。长谷川逸子在一份国际出版物上发表了它的一张具体照片。出于某种原因，她决定向外界展示这个柱子出现的几乎难以察觉的时刻。在结构的定位和结构的表达如此相关的时代，她只在最不重要的、最难进入的空间揭示了它。这让我好奇，她到底在想什么。

2021年9月18日

Filipe Magalhães: The limbo in which we, fala, operate - between the lack of interest of the client and the excess of ambition and enthusiasm on our side - is very similar to the situation Itsuko Hasegawa was confronted with, while designing her first houses in the 70s.

YOU PUBLISHED THE DRAWINGS AND PHOTOS OF THE HOUSE IN KAKIO IN YOUR RECENT BOOK ON JAPANESE HOUSES. FROM ALL THE BUILDINGS YOU ANALYSED, WHAT MADE YOU MAKE THIS CHOICE?

It is a house built with very little resources. It’s a banal construction of a boring brief. It’s a discrete, cheap, suburban house. However, the discrepancy between what we could call a very unappealing exterior and a phenomenal interior composition - not in a tectonic sense, but in a spatial and symbolic sense, is surprising. It is almost as if Itsuko designed a house that disappears from the outside on purpose, in order to protect the treasure that hides within. 

It has two and a half levels - a social level, a so-called private level, and an attic level. The social level has some program in one corner and a big L - shaped living room in the other corner. The same structure applies to the private level, with some bedrooms in the first corner and a big master bedroom in the second corner.

My reading, however, tells me that the conventional understanding of this house - a social part, a private part, a bedroom, a living room, a space for family members, a space for guests - all these words that we usually use to define the daily life of a house, turn out to be completely irrelevant and insufficient to grasp the real quality present.

If you take all the furniture away from the plans, you end up with a house based on two games - a game between the main and the secondary spaces on each level, and a game between the outside rectangular shape and the inside curved shape, which create important differences and interdependence in the L-shaped rooms on each level. You discover a play of angles, surfaces and light that make sense, independent of any use. It is remarkable that there are no material or structural special effects: there are just walls, windows, ceilings, and floors. Everything is out of white painted plywood. In this sense, it is the work of a master, whereby she truly understood the tools and limitations present and used them only to her advantage. All this is just fantastic.

IN THE TEXT ITSUKO HASEGAWA WROTE ABOUT THE HOUSES SHE BUILT IN THE 70’ („MY WORK OF THE SEVENTIES” IN SD 04/85) SHE SURPRISINGLY UNDERLINES HER INTEREST IN „THE CONCERNS OF LIVING RATHER THAN ABSTRACT METHODS OF ARTISTIC EXPRESSION”. THE HOUSE IN KAKIO, AS YOU STARTED TO EXPLAIN, IS DEFINITELY NOT ONLY ABOUT THE „CONCERNS OF LIVING”.

This entire generation wrote a lot about the mundane conditions in which they had to operate. Although they were strongly influenced by the ideas of Shinohara, they had to work in the shadow of the Metabolist movement and the emerging prefab house industry. Both praised standardised, repetitive dwellings, produced in huge quantities. The group Itsuko Hasegawa belonged to, were the grunge kids, the ones that had only tiny houses to deal with. They struggled a lot for what they believed was right and with the dilemma: „should we even try to be artists or should we be service providers” was very present in all of them. 

Their ambitions, sensibilities and intellectual preparation were inspired by Shinohara’s „house as a work of art”, but their clients were very often not at all interested in architecture, had limited budgets, and tight schedules.

Itsuko Hasegawa worked for Shinohara at the university and knew his clients, who usually came from the higher layers of the society. She was living in both worlds - the elite, and the ordinary reality of a young architect in Japan. She was very conscious of the schizophrenic situation many of her colleagues had to find an answer to. To remain in practice, they were forced to rethink the strategies learned from Shinohara, as his school and methods turned out to be impossible to apply in the majority of cases.

Everything that came to happen in Itsuko Hasegawa’s career was triggered by this contradiction. What she quickly accepted was that maybe her vocabulary, her language, could not be as pure as Shinohara’s. Maybe she could not be as aggressive as he was. She had to create a certain balance, invent games and systems in order to achieve her goals as an author.

Even though she wrote about her doubts on the possibility of a house being a work of art, in Kakio she dodged the bullets, walked between the drops of rain, and found a way to do exactly that, almost pornographically making a house a work of art - without even boasting about it.

WHAT WAS HER ARTISTIC GOAL?

Itsuko Hasegawa never calls the L-shaped spaces bedroom and living room. Instead, she calls them „main room one” and „main room two.” This tells us a lot, because the rooms in the service block, all have names like kitchen, bathroom, washroom, or bedroom. L-rooms remain „main rooms”. It suggests that a house is not about specific uses. It is about space. 

Secondary rooms are there for pragmatic reasons and eventually help to frame what is important. The only published picture of the service block is the staircase - a fundamental device to force you to go through a compressed space, and makes you almost forget the experience you had at ground floor before accessing the second L-shaped space on the first floor.

The ground floor L-shape room is divided in two. There’s a side with a dining table, facing the kitchen and the other which is always empty, both in photos and publications. You assume it to be the entrance space, a space to pass through, a kind of „washing room” where you get ready for what the house is going to reveal to you. In the corner, Itsuko Hasegawa designed a few pieces of fixed furniture. We have a classic triad - entrance, living, dining. All these functions are related to what happens in the service block and have a reasonable surface.

In a normal house, the living room is the biggest space. In this house, the upstairs master bedroom is almost the same area. Both in photos and drawings, the first floor L-shaped space is furnished with only two single beds, orientated on one side of the room. The rest of the room is just empty. At the end of each side of the L-shape, there is a desk, as if this space was meant for both sleeping and working. There is no other furniture. It is a kind of subversive twin of the room below. The floor is very dark, but all the walls are white. The doors have flush white frames ready to fully melt into the white wall surface. The plastic appeal of the natural light, that comes from windows not immediately visible, appears from the side, and hits the pitched ceiling, casting a shadow on the curve, is outstanding.

At ground floor, she had a very clear intention regarding what we can call a traditionalist perspective on program in the social space of a house.

Upstairs instead, there is clearly too much area for a standard bedroom, so the room automatically becomes something else. Thanks to this disproportion and peculiarity Itsuko Hasegawa demonstrates that function it is not the main motivation in her design, but something of another nature, something symbolic.

YOU USE THE WORD „SYMBOLIC” IN REGARD TO SPACE. WHAT DO YOU REFER TO?

I think the symbolic aspect has to do with rationality. A truly symbolic space or element puts you in a position to wonder why it is there, and why like this? It has an appeal of something out of ordinary, not easy to classify, a bit strange. It makes you interpret, think and discuss beyond the functional or technical descriptions.

As far as I am concerned, the way of thinking about functions in the classical sense, in which we think of a house in terms of an entrance hall, a living room, a bedroom, etc. is a very outdated perspective. In our practice we are looking for arrangements in which it is impossible to discern clear pragmatic answers. We introduce vague, abstract notions in order to find an anchor that will trigger some sort of inspired discussion - like the one we are having today.

What the Japanese references showed us during our research, was exactly the importance of blurring the boundaries between the real and the unreal in the sense of giving an alternative, deconstructing the stereotypes about how to live in a house. We want to be part of this family and look for the „thing” that we don’t know how to define very well. We call it a symbolic, or semiotic quality of space and elements.

WHAT DO YOU THINK PUSHED JAPANESE ARCHITECTS TO BECOME EXTRAORDINARILY SENSITIVE TO THIS QUALITY?

We can speculate on that. Japanese language has several symbols to define what we describe with one word. They have several symbols to define white, background etc. Understanding an empty white background from an European perspective is pretty clear, in Japan they would want to clarify how empty, which white, etc. The same thing applies to a column. We have words like column, post, pillar - a few definitions that pretty much refer to the same thing. The Japanese have numerous definitions for what a column means, depending on its position. If it’s in the centre of a structure, it has a specific name, if it’s on the perimeter, it has another If it is in what we could call a low-class building, it has a certain sense, if it is an important symbolic building, like a temple, it has another. It is deeply rooted in Japanese culture to be specific about the meaning of each word and as a consequence of each object.

However, what I believe to be the most important factor is that in this period architects not only intimately arrived at certain conclusions, but also theorised tremendously about their own work. All of these architects wrote and depicted what they were doing in texts published in several magazines. Shinkenchiku in the 80’ had a circulation of one hundred thousand prints every month. The general population was receiving theory from Mayumi Miyawaki, Kazunari Sakamoto and Itsuko Hasegawa among others at regular intervals. An ordinary citizen would probably read one of these texts once in a while. There was a huge diffusion of information that was not just photographic. Architectural theory was reaching everyone.

To a large extent, I think, the cliche of contemporary Japanese architecture, comes from the fact that this does not happen anymore. Last time Toyo Ito wrote a relevant text was probably 30 years ago. The current generation of star architects in Japan have moved in a very different direction. Even if you mention the research of Atelier Bow Wow, it is very different from what happened in Itsuko’s times. Nowadays, architects like Bow Wow are more interested in the urban scale than in the theory of architectural space making. 

Japanese Architecture in the 70’s and 80’s was a moment created by economic and social issues which were then supported by an insanely intense publication frenzy, that in turn allowed a whole generation of architects to stop, think, experiment, read, communicate with each other and consequently, reach the masses. Miyawaki wrote a beautiful text, concluding, that all this effort was aimed at changing the world. There was a combat spirit and a mission. Their enemies at some point stopped being the Metabolists and started to be prefab houses. Similarly, to the impressionists who had to fight photography, architects had to find the energy to fight back, as something was trying to replace them.

The period in which the house we are discussing was built was a period when everything was happening very fast. The price of land was increasing drastically. Some of these houses lasted just a couple of years because the ever-increasing price of land meant they could be replaced right away. The architects knew that their houses were not meant to last. All this allowed Japanese clients to be a bit more flexible and allow more unconventional layouts. In Europe we built for a lifetime. They built for a decade. This makes a huge difference.

It’s very interesting to look at this phenomenon at a macro scale. The publications were really a game changer. Today, the prefab housing that still exists in Japan is deeply influenced by the design these architects theorised 40 years ago. Neither Casabella nor Domus managed to do that in Europe. All of these Japanese publications were contributing to this in Japan.

COMING BACK TO THE HOUSE IN KAKIO, WHAT DO YOU THINK WAS NOT POSSIBLE TO TRANSMIT IN PRESS?

There’s something that the publications of the house never managed to do, which was to explore the acoustic aspect of the house. If you imagine that you just entered, and there are five people having a dinner where the table is drawn, you don’t see them, but you hear them. And if you assume it’s a dinner time, you probably don’t have the natural light coming from the sides, you have some sort of artificial light near the table. You’re going to see the shadows of these people spread all over this white curved surface. In the publications the photos are never inhabited, they are staged and do not show the dynamic components of these spaces.

This is also an interesting point of discussion between Alvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura. Many years ago, at the school in Porto, they were debating if a house in front of the sea, should have a small window or a big window. They disagreed. Souto de Moura felt you should see the whole sea from the room. Siza instead said, no, you should make it small so that people are motivated to go to see the sea. It needs to become something you have to make an effort for.

I would say this Japanese generation agreed with Siza, thinking in terms of hints that attract and provoke you to make you move. I think the play of shadows and the social behaviour inside this house would have a profound effect, very different from what we see published.

WOULD YOU CALL THE HOUSE IN KAKIO A WHITE HOUSE OR A BLACK HOUSE?

I wouldn’t call it either. I think the white here is just circumstantial. It’s not a polemic white like the second style houses of Shinohara. It’s not an abstract white. More than anything else, it’s a means to an end. If you look at it in a timeline, the house in Kakio is built between the end of the second style of Shinohara and the beginning of the third style. I think this white is a white that just liberates something to happen, like in Tanikawa house, where the white makes the tree shaped columns and the sloped earth floor the protagonists of the space. 

I think the white in Kakio and the dark carpet on the floor are necessary, so that you understand the light effects coming from two windows and the double height light source on the ground floor.

IN JAPAN, OFTEN YOU HAVE A WINDOW THAT DOESN’T HAVE A VIEW, IT GIVES ONLY A LITTLE BIT OF LIGHT BECAUSE THE LOTS ARE SO TIGHT. WHAT DO YOU THINK MIGHT BE AN ARGUMENT TO DESTROY THE COMMON STEREOTYPE OF A WINDOW AND CONCEIVE IT AS SOMETHING OTHER THAN A DEVICE TO PURELY LOOK OUT OF?

There’s a lot of theory about urban chaos of Japan and the relationship between architecture and the city written by different architects from the Metabolists to Sou Fujimoto. All of these generations were dealing with the very dense, metabolic urban condition and most often they designed windows just because the building needed to have them for light and ventilation, not because of whatever the window was going to reveal.

A window is one of the few elements that links a specific house to its specific place. The architects of this generation didn’t want it. 

The photos of the windows in the house in Kakio, show them burned - the outside becomes just white. It’s another way of speaking about the autonomy of a house theorised by Shinohara - the house has no site, it does not belong to the context, it can be anywhere. If a window doesn’t give you a view it certainly helps to speak about this intention. 

In house in Kakio the windows cut in the curved wall are facing the window in the outside wall, that gives some natural light to the main room in the groundfloor. However, I don’t think that Itsuko Hasegawa cared if the angle allowed a person to see through both windows at the same time. That’s not the topic at all. 

All of the windows are squares, perfectly framed. They are more like paintings on the wall rather than actual anchors to the context that surrounds the house.

IS THERE ANY WAY IN WHICH YOU WOULD USE THIS HOUSE DIFFERENTLY? DO YOU HAVE SOME KIND OF DREAM OF HOW YOU WOULD MAKE THIS HOUSE YOUR OWN?

I wouldn’t put my bed in any of the main spaces. I would probably place it in the service part, and I could imagine the top level to be the space where I work, and the bottom level the space where I relate with other people, for example. Two main rooms could be for instance a room for the summertime and the room for the winter or a space to read and a space to work or to listen to music. I think the L-shaped rooms are too intense to just sleep in them. I think they have qualities and characteristics that extrapolate them to another level, a symbolic one. I could imagine them to be completely empty and just to walk through them once in a while. They have the fissure space quality of Shinohara’s second style houses, where you put a chair and it’s enough.

To me, the biggest provocations in this house are those two mattresses in the photos and plans. By putting the two beds there, I think, Itsuko Hasegawa is poking the „service provider versus artist” dilemma. She’s saying - “this is what I had to do: look how far I went to achieve what I wanted”. 

IS THERE SOMETHING THAT REMAINS FOR YOU A MISTERY IN THE HOUSE IN KAKIO?

At the time when house in Kakio was built, Shinohara was working on Uehara House and Tanikawa House. He played with structure, symbolic structure. Itsuko Hasegawa also made houses that used structure to create spaces, for example, the house in Yaizu 2 - the structure is the house and vice versa. However, House in Kakio is one where the structure is pretty much disguised. You don’t know where the beams or columns are, except for one very specific moment, you can only see in one photo from the attic space - there is a column that appears and touches the roof in the point of convergence of all the surfaces. It doesn’t show up in the other levels. There’s no writing, nothing that refers to it. Itsuko Hasegawa published one specific photo of it in an international publication. She decided for some reason to reveal to the outside world that almost unperceiveble moment where the column appears. In the time when the positioning of structure and the expression of structure was so relevant, she reveals it only in the least important, and most difficult to access space. It leaves me wondering, what was she thinking about.

18.09.2021

菲利普・麦哲伦：我们Fala工作室这种，在甲方兴趣的缺乏，和我们雄心和热情的过度中运作的处境，和长谷川逸子在70年代设计她的第一批住宅时遇到的情况非常相似。

你在最近出版的《日本住宅》一书中发表了柿生的住宅的图纸和照片。在你分析的所有建筑中，是什么让你做出了这个选择？

这是一个用极少的资源建造的住宅。它是一个无聊指示下的平庸构筑物，一个离散的、廉价的、郊区的住宅。然而，在相当不讨喜的外观和惊人的内部构成之间形成的差异——不是在建构意义上，而是在空间和象征意义上——是令人惊讶的。这几乎就像长谷川逸子故意设计了一个消失于外界的住宅，以保护隐藏在内的珍宝。

它有两层半——一个社交层，一个所谓的私人层，以及一个阁楼层。社交层的一角有一些功能，另一角有一个L型的大起居室。同样的结构适用于私人层，第一个角落有一些卧室，第二个角落有一个大的主卧。

然而，我从中读到的是，对这所住宅的传统理解——社交部分、私人部分、卧室、起居室、家庭成员的空间、客人的空间——所有这些我们通常用来定义住宅日常生活的词，结果是毫不相关且不足以去把握这个住宅真正呈现出来的品质。

如果从平面图上拿掉所有家具，你会得到一所基于两个游戏的住宅——每一层的主要空间和次要空间之间的游戏，以及外部矩形和内部曲线之间的游戏，这在每一层的L形房间中创造了重要的差异和依存。你会发现角度、表面和光线的把玩是有意义的，与任何用途无关。值得注意的是，这里没有任何材料或结构上的特殊效果：只有墙壁、窗户、天花和地板。所有东西都是用刷白的胶合板制成的。在这个意义上，它是一个大师的作品，在此她真正理解目前的工具和限制，并只使用它们来发挥她的优势。所有这一切都很精彩。

在长谷川逸子写的关于她在七十年代建造的住宅的文章中（“我的七十年代作品”，载于SD 04/85），她令人惊讶地强调了她对 “生活的关注而不是抽象的艺术表达方法 “的兴趣。柿生的住宅，在你开始的解释中，绝对不仅仅是在于 “生活的关注”。

这整整一代人写了很多文章关于世俗的状况，他们必须运作于其中。尽管他们受到筱原思想的强烈影响，但他们不得不在新陈代谢运动和新兴的预制房屋行业的阴影下工作。两者都推崇标准化的、重复性的住宅，并大量生产。长谷川逸子所属的群体是颓废派（grunge）的小孩，那些只有小房子可以处理的人。他们为自己认为正确的事情做了很多挣扎，并陷入两难境地：”我们应该甚至尝试成为艺术家，还是应该成为服务提供者”，这在他们所有人身上都很常见。

他们的雄心壮志、情感和智识准备都受到筱原 “作为艺术作品的住宅 “的启发，但他们的客户往往对建筑一点都不感兴趣，预算有限，时间紧迫。

长谷川逸子在大学里为筱原工作，认识他的客户，他们通常来自于上流社会。她生活在两个世界里——精英阶层，以及日本年轻建筑师的普通现实。她非常清楚她的许多同侪必须找到对这种精神分裂的状况的答案。为了保持实践，他们不得不重新思考从筱原那里学到的策略，因为他的学派和方法在大多数情况下都无法适用。

长谷川逸子职业生涯中发生的一切，都是由这个矛盾引发的。她很快接受的是，也许她的词汇，她的语言，不可能像筱原那样纯粹。也许她不能像他那样积极进取。她必须建立某种平衡，创造游戏和系统，以实现她作为一个作家的目标。

尽管她在书中写道，她对房子成为艺术品的可能性表示怀疑，但在柿生的住宅中，她躲过了子弹，在雨滴间行走，并找到了一种方法，几乎像情色画般地将房子变成了艺术品——甚至没有对此夸夸其谈。

她的艺术目标是什么？

长谷川逸子从未将L型空间称为卧室和起居室。相反，她称它们为 “主房间一 “和 “主房间二”。这告诉我们很多，因为服务区的房间，都有厨房、浴室、盥洗室或卧室这类名称。L型房间仍然是 “主要房间”。这表明，住宅不是关于具体的用途。它是关于空间的。

次要房间的存在是出于实用的原因，并最终帮助框定重要的东西。服务区唯一公布的照片是楼梯——一个迫使你穿过压缩空间的基本设施，并使你几乎忘记了在进入二楼第二个L形空间之前在一楼的经历。

一楼的L型房间被一分为二。一边是餐桌，面向厨房，另一边在照片和出版物中都是空的。你假设它是入口空间，一个通过的空间，一种 “洗涤室”，在那里你为住宅将要呈现给你的东西做好准备。在角落里，长谷川逸子设计了几件固定的家具。我们有一个经典的三要素——入口、起居、餐厅。所有这些功能都与在服务体块内发生的事情有关，并且有一个合理的完成面。

在普通的住宅里，起居室是最大的空间。而在这所住宅中，楼上的主卧室几乎是相同的面积。在照片和图纸中，二楼的L形空间只布置了两张单人床，放在房间的一侧。房间的其余部分都是空的。在L型的每一侧的尽头，都有一张书桌，似乎这个空间既是用来睡觉的，也是用来工作的。没有其他家具。它是下面房间的一种颠覆性的孪生。地板很暗，但所有的墙壁都是白色的。门有着齐平的白色门框，妥帖的融化在白色的墙面上。可塑性很强的自然光，源自无法立即可见的窗户，从侧面显现，打在倾斜的天花板上，在曲面上落下投影，非常卓越。

在一楼，她有一个非常明确的意图，从所谓传统主义的视野出发，对住宅的社交空间进行编排。

而在楼上，对于一个标准的卧室来说，显然面积太大，所以房间自动成为了其他什么。得益于这种不相称和特殊性，长谷川逸子表明，功能不是她设计的主要动机，而是一些其他性质的东西，象征性的事物。

你在谈到空间时使用了 "象征性 "一词。你指的是什么？

我认为象征性的层面与合理性有关。一个真正的象征性的空间或元素让你想知道它为什么在那里，为什么是这样的？它有一种超乎寻常的吸引力，不容易分类，有点奇怪。它使你在功能或技术描述之外进行解释、思考和讨论。
就我而言，古典意义上从功能来思考的方式，即我们从入口大厅、起居室、卧室等方面来思考一所住宅，是一种非常过时的观点。在实践中，我们在寻找布局，其中不可能辨别出明确的实用性答案。我们引入模糊的、抽象的概念，以便找到一个锚，引发某种启发式的讨论——就像我们今天这样。
在我们的研究中，日本的案例向我们展示的，正是模糊真实和非真实之间界限的重要性，在这个意义上给出选择，解构了关于如何生活在一个住宅里的刻板观念。我们想成为这个家族的一部分，寻找我们不知道如何准确定义的“东西”。我们称之为空间和元素的象征性的，或符号学的品质。

你认为是什么推动了日本建筑师对这种品质变得异常敏感？

我们可以对此进行推测。日语有好几个字符来定义我们用一个词描述的东西。他们有一些字符来定义白色、背景等。从欧洲的角度理解一个空的白色背景是很清楚的，在日本，他们会想澄清如何空，哪种白色等等。同样的事情也适用于柱子，我们有像column，post，pillar这样的词——几个释义几乎指的是同一件事。日本人对柱子意味着什么有许多界定，这取决于它的位置。如果它在一个结构的中心，它有一个特定的名称，如果它在周边，它有另一个。如果它在所谓低级别的建筑中，它有某种定义，如果它是一个重要的象征性建筑，如寺庙，它有另一个。对每个词的意义以及作为每个物体的结果，它在日本文化中是根深蒂固的。
然而，我认为最重要的因素是，在这个时期，建筑师们不仅密切地得出了某些结论，而且还对自己的成果进行了巨大的理论化工作。所有这些建筑师都在一些杂志上发表文章，描述他们正在做的事情。80年代的《新建筑》每月有十万份的发行量。普通民众定期收到宮胁檀、坂本一成和长谷川逸子等人的理论。一个普通公民可能偶尔会读到其中的一篇文章。这有着一个巨大的信息扩散，不仅仅是影像的问题。建筑理论在当时普及到了每个人。

在很大程度上，我认为，当代日本建筑的陈词滥调，源自于于这种情况不再发生了。上一次伊东丰雄写相关的文章可能是在30年前了。日本这一代的明星建筑师已经朝着一个非常不同的方向发展。即使你提到犬吠工作所（Atelier Bow Wow）的研究，也与逸子时代的情况大不相同。现在，像犬吠工作室这样的建筑师对城市尺度更感兴趣，而不是建筑空间制作的理论。
70年代和80年代的日本建筑处于一个由经济和社会议题创造的时刻，然后由疯狂的出版狂潮支持，这反过来又让整整一代的建筑师停下来，思考，实验，阅读，相互交流，从而抵达大众。宫胁写了一篇漂亮的文章，结论是，所有这些努力都是为了改变世界。有一种战斗精神和使命感。他们的敌人在某种程度上不再是新陈代谢主义，而开始是预制住宅。类似于印象派必须与摄影作斗争，建筑师必须找到能量来反击，因为有些东西正试图取代他们。
我们讨论的这所住宅的建造时期是一个一切都发生得非常快的时期。土地的价格在急剧上升。有些住宅只留存了几年，因为不断上涨的土地价格意味着它们可以马上被取代。建筑师们知道，他们的住宅并不意在持久。所有这些使得日本业主可以更灵活一些，允许更多非常规的布局。在欧洲，我们的建筑为一生而建。他们是以十年为单位而建的。这就有了巨大的区别。

从宏观上看这种现象是非常有趣的。这些出版物确实改变了游戏规则。今天，在日本仍然存在的预制房屋设计深受这些建筑师40年前的理论的影响。在欧洲，Casabella和Domus都没能做到这一点。所有这些日本出版物都对日本的这一切做出了贡献。

回到柿生的住宅，你认为有什么是无法在媒体上传播的？

有一件事是住宅的出版物无法做到的，那就是探索住宅的声学层面。如果你想象你一进入，有五个人正在描绘餐桌的位置吃饭，你看不到，但能听到他们。而你假设这是晚餐时间，可能没有自然光从侧面射来，你在桌子附近有某种人造光。你会看到这些人的影子遍布在这个白色的弧形曲面上。在出版物中，这些照片里从来没有人居住，它们是布景式的，没有显示出这些空间的动态成分。
这也是阿尔瓦罗-西扎和艾德瓦尔多客苏托客德客莫拉讨论的一个有趣的点。许多年前，在波尔图的学校里，他们争论于，在海边的住宅应该有一个小窗户还是一个大窗户。他们意见不一。苏托-德-莫拉认为你应该从房间里看到整个大海。西扎却说，不，你应该把它弄小，这样人们才会有动力去看海。它需要成为你必须努力去做的事情。
我想说的是，这一代日本人同意西扎的观点，考虑用暗示来吸引和激发你，使你行动。我认为这所住宅中对影子和社会行为的把玩会产生强烈的效果，与我们在出版物中看到的非常不同。

你会将柿生的住宅称为是白住宅还是黑住宅？

两个我都不会说。我认为这里的白色只是间接的。它不像筱原第二样式住宅那样的论战性（polemic）的白色，这不是一种抽象的白色。更重要的是，它是达到目的的一种手段。如果你从时间轴上看，柿生的住宅是建造于筱原第二样式结束和第三样式开始之间。我认为这种白色解放了一些事物的发生，就像在谷川之家里，白色使树形的柱子和倾斜的夯土地面成为空间的主角。
我认为柿生的住宅的白色和地面上的深色地毯是必要的，这样你就能理解一楼中来自两个窗户和通高的光源的光线效果。

在日本，通常你有一个没有风景的窗户，它只提供一点点的光线，因为地块非常狭窄。你认为有什么理由能打破窗户的常规刻板观念，把它构想为一个单纯看室外的设施以外的东西？

有很多关于日本城市乱象的理论，以及从新陈代谢派到藤本壮介的一系列不同建筑师写的建筑与城市的关系。所有这几代人都在处理非常密集的、新陈代谢着的城市状况，大多数情况下，他们设计窗户只是因为建筑需要有窗户来采光和通风，而不是因为窗户会揭示出什么。
窗户是为数不多的将特定房屋与特定地点联系起来的元素之一。这一代的建筑师们并不希望如此。

柿生的住宅中窗户的照片显示它们被销毁了——外面变得只是白色。这是谈论筱原理论中住宅的自主性的另一种方式——这个住宅没有基地，它不属于文脉（context）中，它可以在任何地方。如果一个窗户不给你视野，这当然有助于谈论这个意图。
在柿生的住宅里，在弧形墙上开的窗户正对着外墙的窗户，这给底层的主要房间带来了一些自然光。然而，我认为长谷川逸子并不关心这个角度是否能让人同时看到两个窗户，这完全不是议题。
所有的窗户都是方形的，有完美的窗框。它们更像是墙上的画，而不是实际连接周边文脉的锚点。

你会有什么不同的方式使用这所住宅吗？你是否有某种使这所住宅成为自己的住宅的梦想？

我不会把我的床放在任何一个主要空间里。我可能会把它放在服务部分，我可以想象顶层是我工作的空间，而底层是我与其他人相处的空间，比如说。两个主要的房间可以是例如夏天的房间和冬天的房间，或者一个阅读的空间和一个工作的空间或听音乐的空间。我认为L型房间太有张力了，不能只在里面睡觉。我认为它们拥有的品质和特点，将其推到另一个层次，一个象征性的层次。我可以想象它们是完全空的，我只是偶尔走过。它们有筱原的第二样式住宅中龟裂空间（fissure space）的品质，在那里你放一把椅子就够了。
对我来说，这所住宅里最大的挑战是照片和图纸上的那两张床垫。通过把这两张床放在那里，我认为长谷川逸子是在挑衅 "服务提供者vs艺术家 "的困境。她在说——"这是我必须做的：看看我为了实现我想要的东西走了多远"。

在柿生的住宅中有什么东西对你来说仍然是个谜吗？

在柿生的住宅被建造的时候，筱原正在建造上原通住宅和谷川之家。他把玩的是结构，象征性的结构。长谷川逸子也做了一些用结构来创造空间的房子，例如，焼津的住宅2——结构就是住宅，反之亦然。然而，柿生的住宅是一个结构被隐藏得很好的作品。你不知道梁或柱子在哪里，除了一个非常特殊的瞬间，你只能从阁楼里的一张照片中看到——在所有表面的交汇点，有一根柱子出现并接触到屋顶。它没有出现在其他表面。没有任何文字，或其他东西提到它。长谷川逸子在一份国际出版物上发表了它的一张具体照片。出于某种原因，她决定向外界展示这个柱子出现的几乎难以察觉的时刻。在结构的定位和结构的表达如此相关的时代，她只在最不重要的、最难进入的空间揭示了它。这让我好奇，她到底在想什么。

2021年9月18日

Filipe Magalhães: The limbo in which we, fala, operate - between the lack of interest of the client and the excess of ambition and enthusiasm on our side - is very similar to the situation Itsuko Hasegawa was confronted with, while designing her first houses in the 70s.

YOU PUBLISHED THE DRAWINGS AND PHOTOS OF THE HOUSE IN KAKIO IN YOUR RECENT BOOK ON JAPANESE HOUSES. FROM ALL THE BUILDINGS YOU ANALYSED, WHAT MADE YOU MAKE THIS CHOICE?

It is a house built with very little resources. It’s a banal construction of a boring brief. It’s a discrete, cheap, suburban house. However, the discrepancy between what we could call a very unappealing exterior and a phenomenal interior composition - not in a tectonic sense, but in a spatial and symbolic sense, is surprising. It is almost as if Itsuko designed a house that disappears from the outside on purpose, in order to protect the treasure that hides within. 

It has two and a half levels - a social level, a so-called private level, and an attic level. The social level has some program in one corner and a big L - shaped living room in the other corner. The same structure applies to the private level, with some bedrooms in the first corner and a big master bedroom in the second corner.

My reading, however, tells me that the conventional understanding of this house - a social part, a private part, a bedroom, a living room, a space for family members, a space for guests - all these words that we usually use to define the daily life of a house, turn out to be completely irrelevant and insufficient to grasp the real quality present.

If you take all the furniture away from the plans, you end up with a house based on two games - a game between the main and the secondary spaces on each level, and a game between the outside rectangular shape and the inside curved shape, which create important differences and interdependence in the L-shaped rooms on each level. You discover a play of angles, surfaces and light that make sense, independent of any use. It is remarkable that there are no material or structural special effects: there are just walls, windows, ceilings, and floors. Everything is out of white painted plywood. In this sense, it is the work of a master, whereby she truly understood the tools and limitations present and used them only to her advantage. All this is just fantastic.

IN THE TEXT ITSUKO HASEGAWA WROTE ABOUT THE HOUSES SHE BUILT IN THE 70’ („MY WORK OF THE SEVENTIES” IN SD 04/85) SHE SURPRISINGLY UNDERLINES HER INTEREST IN „THE CONCERNS OF LIVING RATHER THAN ABSTRACT METHODS OF ARTISTIC EXPRESSION”. THE HOUSE IN KAKIO, AS YOU STARTED TO EXPLAIN, IS DEFINITELY NOT ONLY ABOUT THE „CONCERNS OF LIVING”.

This entire generation wrote a lot about the mundane conditions in which they had to operate. Although they were strongly influenced by the ideas of Shinohara, they had to work in the shadow of the Metabolist movement and the emerging prefab house industry. Both praised standardised, repetitive dwellings, produced in huge quantities. The group Itsuko Hasegawa belonged to, were the grunge kids, the ones that had only tiny houses to deal with. They struggled a lot for what they believed was right and with the dilemma: „should we even try to be artists or should we be service providers” was very present in all of them. 

Their ambitions, sensibilities and intellectual preparation were inspired by Shinohara’s „house as a work of art”, but their clients were very often not at all interested in architecture, had limited budgets, and tight schedules.

Itsuko Hasegawa worked for Shinohara at the university and knew his clients, who usually came from the higher layers of the society. She was living in both worlds - the elite, and the ordinary reality of a young architect in Japan. She was very conscious of the schizophrenic situation many of her colleagues had to find an answer to. To remain in practice, they were forced to rethink the strategies learned from Shinohara, as his school and methods turned out to be impossible to apply in the majority of cases.

Everything that came to happen in Itsuko Hasegawa’s career was triggered by this contradiction. What she quickly accepted was that maybe her vocabulary, her language, could not be as pure as Shinohara’s. Maybe she could not be as aggressive as he was. She had to create a certain balance, invent games and systems in order to achieve her goals as an author.

Even though she wrote about her doubts on the possibility of a house being a work of art, in Kakio she dodged the bullets, walked between the drops of rain, and found a way to do exactly that, almost pornographically making a house a work of art - without even boasting about it.

WHAT WAS HER ARTISTIC GOAL?

Itsuko Hasegawa never calls the L-shaped spaces bedroom and living room. Instead, she calls them „main room one” and „main room two.” This tells us a lot, because the rooms in the service block, all have names like kitchen, bathroom, washroom, or bedroom. L-rooms remain „main rooms”. It suggests that a house is not about specific uses. It is about space. 

Secondary rooms are there for pragmatic reasons and eventually help to frame what is important. The only published picture of the service block is the staircase - a fundamental device to force you to go through a compressed space, and makes you almost forget the experience you had at ground floor before accessing the second L-shaped space on the first floor.

The ground floor L-shape room is divided in two. There’s a side with a dining table, facing the kitchen and the other which is always empty, both in photos and publications. You assume it to be the entrance space, a space to pass through, a kind of „washing room” where you get ready for what the house is going to reveal to you. In the corner, Itsuko Hasegawa designed a few pieces of fixed furniture. We have a classic triad - entrance, living, dining. All these functions are related to what happens in the service block and have a reasonable surface.

In a normal house, the living room is the biggest space. In this house, the upstairs master bedroom is almost the same area. Both in photos and drawings, the first floor L-shaped space is furnished with only two single beds, orientated on one side of the room. The rest of the room is just empty. At the end of each side of the L-shape, there is a desk, as if this space was meant for both sleeping and working. There is no other furniture. It is a kind of subversive twin of the room below. The floor is very dark, but all the walls are white. The doors have flush white frames ready to fully melt into the white wall surface. The plastic appeal of the natural light, that comes from windows not immediately visible, appears from the side, and hits the pitched ceiling, casting a shadow on the curve, is outstanding.

At ground floor, she had a very clear intention regarding what we can call a traditionalist perspective on program in the social space of a house.

Upstairs instead, there is clearly too much area for a standard bedroom, so the room automatically becomes something else. Thanks to this disproportion and peculiarity Itsuko Hasegawa demonstrates that function it is not the main motivation in her design, but something of another nature, something symbolic.

YOU USE THE WORD „SYMBOLIC” IN REGARD TO SPACE. WHAT DO YOU REFER TO?

I think the symbolic aspect has to do with rationality. A truly symbolic space or element puts you in a position to wonder why it is there, and why like this? It has an appeal of something out of ordinary, not easy to classify, a bit strange. It makes you interpret, think and discuss beyond the functional or technical descriptions.

As far as I am concerned, the way of thinking about functions in the classical sense, in which we think of a house in terms of an entrance hall, a living room, a bedroom, etc. is a very outdated perspective. In our practice we are looking for arrangements in which it is impossible to discern clear pragmatic answers. We introduce vague, abstract notions in order to find an anchor that will trigger some sort of inspired discussion - like the one we are having today.

What the Japanese references showed us during our research, was exactly the importance of blurring the boundaries between the real and the unreal in the sense of giving an alternative, deconstructing the stereotypes about how to live in a house. We want to be part of this family and look for the „thing” that we don’t know how to define very well. We call it a symbolic, or semiotic quality of space and elements.

WHAT DO YOU THINK PUSHED JAPANESE ARCHITECTS TO BECOME EXTRAORDINARILY SENSITIVE TO THIS QUALITY?

We can speculate on that. Japanese language has several symbols to define what we describe with one word. They have several symbols to define white, background etc. Understanding an empty white background from an European perspective is pretty clear, in Japan they would want to clarify how empty, which white, etc. The same thing applies to a column. We have words like column, post, pillar - a few definitions that pretty much refer to the same thing. The Japanese have numerous definitions for what a column means, depending on its position. If it’s in the centre of a structure, it has a specific name, if it’s on the perimeter, it has another If it is in what we could call a low-class building, it has a certain sense, if it is an important symbolic building, like a temple, it has another. It is deeply rooted in Japanese culture to be specific about the meaning of each word and as a consequence of each object.

However, what I believe to be the most important factor is that in this period architects not only intimately arrived at certain conclusions, but also theorised tremendously about their own work. All of these architects wrote and depicted what they were doing in texts published in several magazines. Shinkenchiku in the 80’ had a circulation of one hundred thousand prints every month. The general population was receiving theory from Mayumi Miyawaki, Kazunari Sakamoto and Itsuko Hasegawa among others at regular intervals. An ordinary citizen would probably read one of these texts once in a while. There was a huge diffusion of information that was not just photographic. Architectural theory was reaching everyone.

To a large extent, I think, the cliche of contemporary Japanese architecture, comes from the fact that this does not happen anymore. Last time Toyo Ito wrote a relevant text was probably 30 years ago. The current generation of star architects in Japan have moved in a very different direction. Even if you mention the research of Atelier Bow Wow, it is very different from what happened in Itsuko’s times. Nowadays, architects like Bow Wow are more interested in the urban scale than in the theory of architectural space making. 

Japanese Architecture in the 70’s and 80’s was a moment created by economic and social issues which were then supported by an insanely intense publication frenzy, that in turn allowed a whole generation of architects to stop, think, experiment, read, communicate with each other and consequently, reach the masses. Miyawaki wrote a beautiful text, concluding, that all this effort was aimed at changing the world. There was a combat spirit and a mission. Their enemies at some point stopped being the Metabolists and started to be prefab houses. Similarly, to the impressionists who had to fight photography, architects had to find the energy to fight back, as something was trying to replace them.

The period in which the house we are discussing was built was a period when everything was happening very fast. The price of land was increasing drastically. Some of these houses lasted just a couple of years because the ever-increasing price of land meant they could be replaced right away. The architects knew that their houses were not meant to last. All this allowed Japanese clients to be a bit more flexible and allow more unconventional layouts. In Europe we built for a lifetime. They built for a decade. This makes a huge difference.

It’s very interesting to look at this phenomenon at a macro scale. The publications were really a game changer. Today, the prefab housing that still exists in Japan is deeply influenced by the design these architects theorised 40 years ago. Neither Casabella nor Domus managed to do that in Europe. All of these Japanese publications were contributing to this in Japan.

COMING BACK TO THE HOUSE IN KAKIO, WHAT DO YOU THINK WAS NOT POSSIBLE TO TRANSMIT IN PRESS?

There’s something that the publications of the house never managed to do, which was to explore the acoustic aspect of the house. If you imagine that you just entered, and there are five people having a dinner where the table is drawn, you don’t see them, but you hear them. And if you assume it’s a dinner time, you probably don’t have the natural light coming from the sides, you have some sort of artificial light near the table. You’re going to see the shadows of these people spread all over this white curved surface. In the publications the photos are never inhabited, they are staged and do not show the dynamic components of these spaces.

This is also an interesting point of discussion between Alvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura. Many years ago, at the school in Porto, they were debating if a house in front of the sea, should have a small window or a big window. They disagreed. Souto de Moura felt you should see the whole sea from the room. Siza instead said, no, you should make it small so that people are motivated to go to see the sea. It needs to become something you have to make an effort for.

I would say this Japanese generation agreed with Siza, thinking in terms of hints that attract and provoke you to make you move. I think the play of shadows and the social behaviour inside this house would have a profound effect, very different from what we see published.

WOULD YOU CALL THE HOUSE IN KAKIO A WHITE HOUSE OR A BLACK HOUSE?

I wouldn’t call it either. I think the white here is just circumstantial. It’s not a polemic white like the second style houses of Shinohara. It’s not an abstract white. More than anything else, it’s a means to an end. If you look at it in a timeline, the house in Kakio is built between the end of the second style of Shinohara and the beginning of the third style. I think this white is a white that just liberates something to happen, like in Tanikawa house, where the white makes the tree shaped columns and the sloped earth floor the protagonists of the space. 

I think the white in Kakio and the dark carpet on the floor are necessary, so that you understand the light effects coming from two windows and the double height light source on the ground floor.

IN JAPAN, OFTEN YOU HAVE A WINDOW THAT DOESN’T HAVE A VIEW, IT GIVES ONLY A LITTLE BIT OF LIGHT BECAUSE THE LOTS ARE SO TIGHT. WHAT DO YOU THINK MIGHT BE AN ARGUMENT TO DESTROY THE COMMON STEREOTYPE OF A WINDOW AND CONCEIVE IT AS SOMETHING OTHER THAN A DEVICE TO PURELY LOOK OUT OF?

There’s a lot of theory about urban chaos of Japan and the relationship between architecture and the city written by different architects from the Metabolists to Sou Fujimoto. All of these generations were dealing with the very dense, metabolic urban condition and most often they designed windows just because the building needed to have them for light and ventilation, not because of whatever the window was going to reveal.

A window is one of the few elements that links a specific house to its specific place. The architects of this generation didn’t want it. 

The photos of the windows in the house in Kakio, show them burned - the outside becomes just white. It’s another way of speaking about the autonomy of a house theorised by Shinohara - the house has no site, it does not belong to the context, it can be anywhere. If a window doesn’t give you a view it certainly helps to speak about this intention. 

In house in Kakio the windows cut in the curved wall are facing the window in the outside wall, that gives some natural light to the main room in the groundfloor. However, I don’t think that Itsuko Hasegawa cared if the angle allowed a person to see through both windows at the same time. That’s not the topic at all. 

All of the windows are squares, perfectly framed. They are more like paintings on the wall rather than actual anchors to the context that surrounds the house.

IS THERE ANY WAY IN WHICH YOU WOULD USE THIS HOUSE DIFFERENTLY? DO YOU HAVE SOME KIND OF DREAM OF HOW YOU WOULD MAKE THIS HOUSE YOUR OWN?

I wouldn’t put my bed in any of the main spaces. I would probably place it in the service part, and I could imagine the top level to be the space where I work, and the bottom level the space where I relate with other people, for example. Two main rooms could be for instance a room for the summertime and the room for the winter or a space to read and a space to work or to listen to music. I think the L-shaped rooms are too intense to just sleep in them. I think they have qualities and characteristics that extrapolate them to another level, a symbolic one. I could imagine them to be completely empty and just to walk through them once in a while. They have the fissure space quality of Shinohara’s second style houses, where you put a chair and it’s enough.

To me, the biggest provocations in this house are those two mattresses in the photos and plans. By putting the two beds there, I think, Itsuko Hasegawa is poking the „service provider versus artist” dilemma. She’s saying - “this is what I had to do: look how far I went to achieve what I wanted”. 

IS THERE SOMETHING THAT REMAINS FOR YOU A MISTERY IN THE HOUSE IN KAKIO?

At the time when house in Kakio was built, Shinohara was working on Uehara House and Tanikawa House. He played with structure, symbolic structure. Itsuko Hasegawa also made houses that used structure to create spaces, for example, the house in Yaizu 2 - the structure is the house and vice versa. However, House in Kakio is one where the structure is pretty much disguised. You don’t know where the beams or columns are, except for one very specific moment, you can only see in one photo from the attic space - there is a column that appears and touches the roof in the point of convergence of all the surfaces. It doesn’t show up in the other levels. There’s no writing, nothing that refers to it. Itsuko Hasegawa published one specific photo of it in an international publication. She decided for some reason to reveal to the outside world that almost unperceiveble moment where the column appears. In the time when the positioning of structure and the expression of structure was so relevant, she reveals it only in the least important, and most difficult to access space. It leaves me wondering, what was she thinking about.

18.09.2021

菲利普・麦哲伦：我们Fala工作室这种，在甲方兴趣的缺乏，和我们雄心和热情的过度中运作的处境，和长谷川逸子在70年代设计她的第一批住宅时遇到的情况非常相似。

你在最近出版的《日本住宅》一书中发表了柿生的住宅的图纸和照片。在你分析的所有建筑中，是什么让你做出了这个选择？

这是一个用极少的资源建造的住宅。它是一个无聊指示下的平庸构筑物，一个离散的、廉价的、郊区的住宅。然而，在相当不讨喜的外观和惊人的内部构成之间形成的差异——不是在建构意义上，而是在空间和象征意义上——是令人惊讶的。这几乎就像长谷川逸子故意设计了一个消失于外界的住宅，以保护隐藏在内的珍宝。

它有两层半——一个社交层，一个所谓的私人层，以及一个阁楼层。社交层的一角有一些功能，另一角有一个L型的大起居室。同样的结构适用于私人层，第一个角落有一些卧室，第二个角落有一个大的主卧。

然而，我从中读到的是，对这所住宅的传统理解——社交部分、私人部分、卧室、起居室、家庭成员的空间、客人的空间——所有这些我们通常用来定义住宅日常生活的词，结果是毫不相关且不足以去把握这个住宅真正呈现出来的品质。

如果从平面图上拿掉所有家具，你会得到一所基于两个游戏的住宅——每一层的主要空间和次要空间之间的游戏，以及外部矩形和内部曲线之间的游戏，这在每一层的L形房间中创造了重要的差异和依存。你会发现角度、表面和光线的把玩是有意义的，与任何用途无关。值得注意的是，这里没有任何材料或结构上的特殊效果：只有墙壁、窗户、天花和地板。所有东西都是用刷白的胶合板制成的。在这个意义上，它是一个大师的作品，在此她真正理解目前的工具和限制，并只使用它们来发挥她的优势。所有这一切都很精彩。

在长谷川逸子写的关于她在七十年代建造的住宅的文章中（“我的七十年代作品”，载于SD 04/85），她令人惊讶地强调了她对 “生活的关注而不是抽象的艺术表达方法 “的兴趣。柿生的住宅，在你开始的解释中，绝对不仅仅是在于 “生活的关注”。

这整整一代人写了很多文章关于世俗的状况，他们必须运作于其中。尽管他们受到筱原思想的强烈影响，但他们不得不在新陈代谢运动和新兴的预制房屋行业的阴影下工作。两者都推崇标准化的、重复性的住宅，并大量生产。长谷川逸子所属的群体是颓废派（grunge）的小孩，那些只有小房子可以处理的人。他们为自己认为正确的事情做了很多挣扎，并陷入两难境地：”我们应该甚至尝试成为艺术家，还是应该成为服务提供者”，这在他们所有人身上都很常见。

他们的雄心壮志、情感和智识准备都受到筱原 “作为艺术作品的住宅 “的启发，但他们的客户往往对建筑一点都不感兴趣，预算有限，时间紧迫。

长谷川逸子在大学里为筱原工作，认识他的客户，他们通常来自于上流社会。她生活在两个世界里——精英阶层，以及日本年轻建筑师的普通现实。她非常清楚她的许多同侪必须找到对这种精神分裂的状况的答案。为了保持实践，他们不得不重新思考从筱原那里学到的策略，因为他的学派和方法在大多数情况下都无法适用。

长谷川逸子职业生涯中发生的一切，都是由这个矛盾引发的。她很快接受的是，也许她的词汇，她的语言，不可能像筱原那样纯粹。也许她不能像他那样积极进取。她必须建立某种平衡，创造游戏和系统，以实现她作为一个作家的目标。

尽管她在书中写道，她对房子成为艺术品的可能性表示怀疑，但在柿生的住宅中，她躲过了子弹，在雨滴间行走，并找到了一种方法，几乎像情色画般地将房子变成了艺术品——甚至没有对此夸夸其谈。

她的艺术目标是什么？

长谷川逸子从未将L型空间称为卧室和起居室。相反，她称它们为 “主房间一 “和 “主房间二”。这告诉我们很多，因为服务区的房间，都有厨房、浴室、盥洗室或卧室这类名称。L型房间仍然是 “主要房间”。这表明，住宅不是关于具体的用途。它是关于空间的。

次要房间的存在是出于实用的原因，并最终帮助框定重要的东西。服务区唯一公布的照片是楼梯——一个迫使你穿过压缩空间的基本设施，并使你几乎忘记了在进入二楼第二个L形空间之前在一楼的经历。

一楼的L型房间被一分为二。一边是餐桌，面向厨房，另一边在照片和出版物中都是空的。你假设它是入口空间，一个通过的空间，一种 “洗涤室”，在那里你为住宅将要呈现给你的东西做好准备。在角落里，长谷川逸子设计了几件固定的家具。我们有一个经典的三要素——入口、起居、餐厅。所有这些功能都与在服务体块内发生的事情有关，并且有一个合理的完成面。

在普通的住宅里，起居室是最大的空间。而在这所住宅中，楼上的主卧室几乎是相同的面积。在照片和图纸中，二楼的L形空间只布置了两张单人床，放在房间的一侧。房间的其余部分都是空的。在L型的每一侧的尽头，都有一张书桌，似乎这个空间既是用来睡觉的，也是用来工作的。没有其他家具。它是下面房间的一种颠覆性的孪生。地板很暗，但所有的墙壁都是白色的。门有着齐平的白色门框，妥帖的融化在白色的墙面上。可塑性很强的自然光，源自无法立即可见的窗户，从侧面显现，打在倾斜的天花板上，在曲面上落下投影，非常卓越。

在一楼，她有一个非常明确的意图，从所谓传统主义的视野出发，对住宅的社交空间进行编排。

而在楼上，对于一个标准的卧室来说，显然面积太大，所以房间自动成为了其他什么。得益于这种不相称和特殊性，长谷川逸子表明，功能不是她设计的主要动机，而是一些其他性质的东西，象征性的事物。

你在谈到空间时使用了 "象征性 "一词。你指的是什么？

我认为象征性的层面与合理性有关。一个真正的象征性的空间或元素让你想知道它为什么在那里，为什么是这样的？它有一种超乎寻常的吸引力，不容易分类，有点奇怪。它使你在功能或技术描述之外进行解释、思考和讨论。
就我而言，古典意义上从功能来思考的方式，即我们从入口大厅、起居室、卧室等方面来思考一所住宅，是一种非常过时的观点。在实践中，我们在寻找布局，其中不可能辨别出明确的实用性答案。我们引入模糊的、抽象的概念，以便找到一个锚，引发某种启发式的讨论——就像我们今天这样。
在我们的研究中，日本的案例向我们展示的，正是模糊真实和非真实之间界限的重要性，在这个意义上给出选择，解构了关于如何生活在一个住宅里的刻板观念。我们想成为这个家族的一部分，寻找我们不知道如何准确定义的“东西”。我们称之为空间和元素的象征性的，或符号学的品质。

你认为是什么推动了日本建筑师对这种品质变得异常敏感？

我们可以对此进行推测。日语有好几个字符来定义我们用一个词描述的东西。他们有一些字符来定义白色、背景等。从欧洲的角度理解一个空的白色背景是很清楚的，在日本，他们会想澄清如何空，哪种白色等等。同样的事情也适用于柱子，我们有像column，post，pillar这样的词——几个释义几乎指的是同一件事。日本人对柱子意味着什么有许多界定，这取决于它的位置。如果它在一个结构的中心，它有一个特定的名称，如果它在周边，它有另一个。如果它在所谓低级别的建筑中，它有某种定义，如果它是一个重要的象征性建筑，如寺庙，它有另一个。对每个词的意义以及作为每个物体的结果，它在日本文化中是根深蒂固的。
然而，我认为最重要的因素是，在这个时期，建筑师们不仅密切地得出了某些结论，而且还对自己的成果进行了巨大的理论化工作。所有这些建筑师都在一些杂志上发表文章，描述他们正在做的事情。80年代的《新建筑》每月有十万份的发行量。普通民众定期收到宮胁檀、坂本一成和长谷川逸子等人的理论。一个普通公民可能偶尔会读到其中的一篇文章。这有着一个巨大的信息扩散，不仅仅是影像的问题。建筑理论在当时普及到了每个人。

在很大程度上，我认为，当代日本建筑的陈词滥调，源自于于这种情况不再发生了。上一次伊东丰雄写相关的文章可能是在30年前了。日本这一代的明星建筑师已经朝着一个非常不同的方向发展。即使你提到犬吠工作所（Atelier Bow Wow）的研究，也与逸子时代的情况大不相同。现在，像犬吠工作室这样的建筑师对城市尺度更感兴趣，而不是建筑空间制作的理论。
70年代和80年代的日本建筑处于一个由经济和社会议题创造的时刻，然后由疯狂的出版狂潮支持，这反过来又让整整一代的建筑师停下来，思考，实验，阅读，相互交流，从而抵达大众。宫胁写了一篇漂亮的文章，结论是，所有这些努力都是为了改变世界。有一种战斗精神和使命感。他们的敌人在某种程度上不再是新陈代谢主义，而开始是预制住宅。类似于印象派必须与摄影作斗争，建筑师必须找到能量来反击，因为有些东西正试图取代他们。
我们讨论的这所住宅的建造时期是一个一切都发生得非常快的时期。土地的价格在急剧上升。有些住宅只留存了几年，因为不断上涨的土地价格意味着它们可以马上被取代。建筑师们知道，他们的住宅并不意在持久。所有这些使得日本业主可以更灵活一些，允许更多非常规的布局。在欧洲，我们的建筑为一生而建。他们是以十年为单位而建的。这就有了巨大的区别。

从宏观上看这种现象是非常有趣的。这些出版物确实改变了游戏规则。今天，在日本仍然存在的预制房屋设计深受这些建筑师40年前的理论的影响。在欧洲，Casabella和Domus都没能做到这一点。所有这些日本出版物都对日本的这一切做出了贡献。

回到柿生的住宅，你认为有什么是无法在媒体上传播的？

有一件事是住宅的出版物无法做到的，那就是探索住宅的声学层面。如果你想象你一进入，有五个人正在描绘餐桌的位置吃饭，你看不到，但能听到他们。而你假设这是晚餐时间，可能没有自然光从侧面射来，你在桌子附近有某种人造光。你会看到这些人的影子遍布在这个白色的弧形曲面上。在出版物中，这些照片里从来没有人居住，它们是布景式的，没有显示出这些空间的动态成分。
这也是阿尔瓦罗-西扎和艾德瓦尔多客苏托客德客莫拉讨论的一个有趣的点。许多年前，在波尔图的学校里，他们争论于，在海边的住宅应该有一个小窗户还是一个大窗户。他们意见不一。苏托-德-莫拉认为你应该从房间里看到整个大海。西扎却说，不，你应该把它弄小，这样人们才会有动力去看海。它需要成为你必须努力去做的事情。
我想说的是，这一代日本人同意西扎的观点，考虑用暗示来吸引和激发你，使你行动。我认为这所住宅中对影子和社会行为的把玩会产生强烈的效果，与我们在出版物中看到的非常不同。

你会将柿生的住宅称为是白住宅还是黑住宅？

两个我都不会说。我认为这里的白色只是间接的。它不像筱原第二样式住宅那样的论战性（polemic）的白色，这不是一种抽象的白色。更重要的是，它是达到目的的一种手段。如果你从时间轴上看，柿生的住宅是建造于筱原第二样式结束和第三样式开始之间。我认为这种白色解放了一些事物的发生，就像在谷川之家里，白色使树形的柱子和倾斜的夯土地面成为空间的主角。
我认为柿生的住宅的白色和地面上的深色地毯是必要的，这样你就能理解一楼中来自两个窗户和通高的光源的光线效果。

在日本，通常你有一个没有风景的窗户，它只提供一点点的光线，因为地块非常狭窄。你认为有什么理由能打破窗户的常规刻板观念，把它构想为一个单纯看室外的设施以外的东西？

有很多关于日本城市乱象的理论，以及从新陈代谢派到藤本壮介的一系列不同建筑师写的建筑与城市的关系。所有这几代人都在处理非常密集的、新陈代谢着的城市状况，大多数情况下，他们设计窗户只是因为建筑需要有窗户来采光和通风，而不是因为窗户会揭示出什么。
窗户是为数不多的将特定房屋与特定地点联系起来的元素之一。这一代的建筑师们并不希望如此。

柿生的住宅中窗户的照片显示它们被销毁了——外面变得只是白色。这是谈论筱原理论中住宅的自主性的另一种方式——这个住宅没有基地，它不属于文脉（context）中，它可以在任何地方。如果一个窗户不给你视野，这当然有助于谈论这个意图。
在柿生的住宅里，在弧形墙上开的窗户正对着外墙的窗户，这给底层的主要房间带来了一些自然光。然而，我认为长谷川逸子并不关心这个角度是否能让人同时看到两个窗户，这完全不是议题。
所有的窗户都是方形的，有完美的窗框。它们更像是墙上的画，而不是实际连接周边文脉的锚点。

你会有什么不同的方式使用这所住宅吗？你是否有某种使这所住宅成为自己的住宅的梦想？

我不会把我的床放在任何一个主要空间里。我可能会把它放在服务部分，我可以想象顶层是我工作的空间，而底层是我与其他人相处的空间，比如说。两个主要的房间可以是例如夏天的房间和冬天的房间，或者一个阅读的空间和一个工作的空间或听音乐的空间。我认为L型房间太有张力了，不能只在里面睡觉。我认为它们拥有的品质和特点，将其推到另一个层次，一个象征性的层次。我可以想象它们是完全空的，我只是偶尔走过。它们有筱原的第二样式住宅中龟裂空间（fissure space）的品质，在那里你放一把椅子就够了。
对我来说，这所住宅里最大的挑战是照片和图纸上的那两张床垫。通过把这两张床放在那里，我认为长谷川逸子是在挑衅 "服务提供者vs艺术家 "的困境。她在说——"这是我必须做的：看看我为了实现我想要的东西走了多远"。

在柿生的住宅中有什么东西对你来说仍然是个谜吗？

在柿生的住宅被建造的时候，筱原正在建造上原通住宅和谷川之家。他把玩的是结构，象征性的结构。长谷川逸子也做了一些用结构来创造空间的房子，例如，焼津的住宅2——结构就是住宅，反之亦然。然而，柿生的住宅是一个结构被隐藏得很好的作品。你不知道梁或柱子在哪里，除了一个非常特殊的瞬间，你只能从阁楼里的一张照片中看到——在所有表面的交汇点，有一根柱子出现并接触到屋顶。它没有出现在其他表面。没有任何文字，或其他东西提到它。长谷川逸子在一份国际出版物上发表了它的一张具体照片。出于某种原因，她决定向外界展示这个柱子出现的几乎难以察觉的时刻。在结构的定位和结构的表达如此相关的时代，她只在最不重要的、最难进入的空间揭示了它。这让我好奇，她到底在想什么。

2021年9月18日

Fala Atelier

Filipe Magalhães (Porto, 1987) studied architecture at FAUP and worked in Basel and Tokyo before establishing Fala with Ana Luisa Soares, Ahmed Belkhodja and Lera Samovich. Fala’s architecture has been described as very Portuguese by foreigners, and as outlandish by locals; both views are probably right. Filipe is regularly invited as a teacher, guest critic and lecturer in various institutions and is currently developing his phd on the possibility of a second language of architecture.

Fala Atelier

Filipe Magalhães (Porto, 1987) studied architecture at FAUP and worked in Basel and Tokyo before establishing Fala with Ana Luisa Soares, Ahmed Belkhodja and Lera Samovich. Fala’s architecture has been described as very Portuguese by foreigners, and as outlandish by locals; both views are probably right. Filipe is regularly invited as a teacher, guest critic and lecturer in various institutions and is currently developing his phd on the possibility of a second language of architecture.

Fala Atelier

Filipe Magalhães (Porto, 1987) studied architecture at FAUP and worked in Basel and Tokyo before establishing Fala with Ana Luisa Soares, Ahmed Belkhodja and Lera Samovich. Fala’s architecture has been described as very Portuguese by foreigners, and as outlandish by locals; both views are probably right. Filipe is regularly invited as a teacher, guest critic and lecturer in various institutions and is currently developing his phd on the possibility of a second language of architecture.