In my recent post about "takeaways from Japan" I spoke about a willingness to experiment and be playful with the built environment. I said that quite often people design homes around what they want, as opposed to what they think might broadly appeal to the market. So today, let's look at an example. Below is a site on the outskirts of Tokyo, about an hour from the center of the city. The architect — Kamakura Studio — describes it as being situated in a "new town" where about 75% of the residents have moved in within the past decade. And like Japan as a whole, problems of aging and population decline are expected in the future.

Using Google Maps to get rough dimensions, the site looks to be somewhere around 8m wide by 11m deep. So this is not a huge site compared to what you might find in the suburbs of other cities, but it's certainly a very workable set of dimensions. Also noteworthy is the fact that the area has no sidewalks. This is common throughout Tokyo. Ordinarily, this would imply a suburban mental model. But in practice, Tokyo's streets actually feel very pedestrian-friendly. And that's because they tend to be narrow and the entire city is oriented mostly around rail.

What was ultimately developed on the site is this (House F):

Totalling 169 m2, the first floor of the house serves as an office for the architect and as an open space for the local community. The firm opens up the space to people who may want to stop in for coffee (or just hang out) and for movie nights. There's even a "plant-sharing network" on the terrace where dozens of households supposedly contribute and participate. On the second and third floor of the house are the domestic quarters. Here there are two generous bedrooms, study spaces, and multiple balconies, one of which provides access to a rooftop terrace.

It's a highly livable house, but it's also designed to meet a particular set of ambitions. I mean, look at the above coffee window. And this is one of the really cool things about domestic architecture in Japan. (If any of you are familiar with how the zoning would work for a site like this, I'd love to understand that.)

Project images via Kamakura Studio

Last week I picked up an Epson document scanner with the hope of going paperless in my home office. I know I’m late to this party, but just hadn’t gotten around to researching and selecting the right machine. Manually filing papers is passé, time consuming, and impractical in smaller living spaces.

Let me tell you: I am so impressed by how quickly I was able to clear off my desk and throw everything directly into Google Drive and Evernote. Now I have an empty desk and I can access any of these files from my phone. Decluttering is a great feeling.

I am sure that many of you are already doing this, but if you aren’t, consider investing in a quality scanner with a good automatic document feeder that does double sided scans. If the process is quick and painless, you’ll be more likely to do it on a regular basis. That was my rationale at least.

One of the things I like about living in a smaller space is that it forces you to live more minimally, which is something I am constantly aspiring to do. For me, going paperless is a step in that direction.