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As part of our work Celebration 25. AnniversaryWe reproduce formative magazine stories before our website has been launched. This story has previously appeared in the workshop in 2001. years.
“I could take care of the Tatamia more” The 37-year-old Graphic designer Shingo Fujivaki says she says casually as she pushes the shock of long, black hair from her eyes. Instead, when he had a chance to break a 30-year-old slaming flesh and replace him home, Fujivaki went in search of the architect who could give him what he wanted: empty, white shells. In Katsu Umebayshi, the 37-year head of the design firm FabaHe only found a man. And, in Fujivak’s house, Foba found what it showed that the perfect prototype for her new endeavor: FOB HOMESThe verdict of architects on the housewife market, whose complete homes are coming there are almost all new houses built in Japan.
The practice of 12 people was founded in 1995. years, phoba is based in UJI, in the city that grows tea outside Kyoto. The phoba is known for its experimental houses and inventive commercial projects such as its own seat building, “organ”, commission for continuous space that ends with levels of levels and strange corners.
The 1,376-square house built by Foba for Fujivaki and his family sits in the corner of Smack Dab in the middle of Suits, the Type of Japan Letittown on the outskirts of Osaka, which was created at the time of Expo 1970. years. Against background cottage for the Neighbor Surrounding Cut, House Fujivakis’ house is difficult to miss. It’s a Stark white concrete box – no parapets, no balconies, no decorations, there’s nothing. And of course, there is no guilty in sight. It doesn’t even have one windows from low glass strips on one side and a large plane of frozen glass on the other side. Then there is a facade: a great white wall, uninterrupted, except where the niche is carved for the entry of the foyer. Although it is almost completely excluded from the outside world, the house should not be introverted or insensitive. On the contrary, “whenever you face a blank wall towards a neighbor, it’s a service,” says Foba Contributor Tom Daniel. The walls politely protect the privacy of Fujivakis and that of neighbors. And because they were returned from the property line, they also welcome open space between houses. This is not a small feat with regard to density in such areas, where The plots are small and the houses are close together.
Although this house can look modern with capital “M”, orthodoxy does not expand many real corners and inappropriate walls. The organization of this house and the way you live Fujivakis in it is definitely domestic. This becomes obviously the moment the threshold violated. By taking over where the external stone asphalting is excluded, the polished concrete becomes an internal floor. However, Fujivakis exchanges on open shoes for internal before the house is in the heart of the house: double height, a combined day and dining room that somehow connects with almost every part of the building. In one direction, it influences Galley’s elegant cuisine, Italian imports of stainless steel, where Fujivakis can be eared in espresso, without quitting the conversation. In the other direction, it opens imperceptibly to the supplied yard with a glass brightness and fresh air (although a freelance staircase is connected to the second floor. Also with enough space for a double bed, with the exposed hanging strip with Fujivakis With Derig’s black, white and gray wardrobe, overlooking the lower living area. Even the bathroom on the first floor, a narrow, skylitic corridor coated with the most beautifully fixed money can buy, is connected to the main room.
The Fujivakis’ house is a far cry than the imitation of the western style homes expel by the manufacturer of houses that build with LEGO-like prefab pieces or even their manuals born to order. If you are buying a car, a camera or clock in Japan, there are many good designs to choose, explains Fujivaki. But houses housewives are another story. “You have no choice – it’s a bad design or nothing,” Fujivaki says. Exactly, they come to a large series of styles and can even include traditional carpenters, together with common tetamas and decorative niches known as tokonomy, plus a passage by kitchen all under one roof with bastard. But designer-wise their stock, based on the west ideal of separate rooms for separate functions, are criticized in its best, and in the worst case, poorly suitable for Japanese lifestyle. “The only things most people decide is who is a pet, how many rooms and how much they will spend,” Lamentue Memebayshi.
It is not a top design that customers are not after visiting salons and sites with domestic salons and sites. Mom is home home home is that it is a famous entity before the country is ever broken. Everyone comes with a promise to be built on time and on the budget. It is also guaranteed: whether synthetic slate roof leaked, a 24-hour company line always ready to provide a service with a smile. And because everyone does it, there is never worries that there is a house that will raise eyebrows. If the client wants a custom design statement, it can always engage architect. However, many potential homeowners stood from existing risks that they do not know what self-discount house of the architect is made or how much it will actually cost. “Very few clients want a work of art; most want life tools, life container,” says Umebayashi. Between these two extremes of standardized home houses, the architects of designed creations are that it is aware of offering an alternative to the design of a conscious design that is the quality of the building house, which usually starts from $ 300,000 (does not include costs of $ 300,000).
How can FOB homes be turned off? By dividing the construction process in six steps that provide clarity and convenience of the formulatory method of households and standardizing the design process for limiting the client selection. Although FOB HOMES has yet to fully use this system, its products so far have a similar look and are planned as a continuous internal spaces (although with careful functional zones) composed of conceptual set of parts. The attached open spaces are also part of the package.
“We want to live fun and satisfactory.” Mitsue Massunaga says, head of FOB COOP, a nation chain 12 actions devoted the expansion of the gospel of good design. Together with Umebayshi, her nephew, she is the driving force for FOB homes. Its stores, called on the term delivery “free of charge,” stocks array of internal products, and foreign made and local, and is impatient to add home designs to her inventory. “What people want is the house most,” Masunaga says, “so I want to sell them.” Thus, the kitchen is open and calls, storage is generally generous to cover up all ways of an undisguised mess and bathrooms are the topmine of stains in each house. (Bathroom Fujivakisov contains a miniature garden and a German grass tub.) This approach provides a picture of the house and its organizational framework, but the residue can be adapted to the needs of the most highest clients. Even the white signature surfaces are only the starting point. Whether it’s art on the walls, food on the kitchen counter, or, like in the house of Fujivakis, their forest green canoeing, decoration and color comes from the client.
To date, ready-made houses look like the products of the architect of the office. This is not a surprise because, so far, each of the three FOB – and 15 houses are filled in works – are Foba products. Unlike other business architecture, each FOB HOMES prototype develops as a starting point with the idea that the versions of her version can one day be building and again. They currently have five prototypes, each diagram of different type of plan, but all variations on the basic topic. “We would like to get to the stage where people order houses from existing prototypes,” Masunaga says. “It should be simpler and cheaper.” For now, the Foba still actively compiles new prototypes.
The basic organizational unit of FOB homes is the updated download of the traditional and flexible space of Japan. They went out the window after World War II, when Japan He was trying to rebuild as quickly as possible. Western goods, especially those from the United States, are considered desirable and modern and imported in a frantic tempo. The domestic data provided “LDK” appearance – a series of bedrooms attached to the living room, dining room and kitchen. But many people still sit on the floor and sleep as a family in one room. “People just adopted all these things, but they didn’t think about how to marry their Japanese customs,” Masunaga says. Accordingly, the last 50 years or so people in Japan had to deal with this noncomb. The Mission of FOB homes is to set it straight. However, this does not mean that you discard all things west or resurrection all traditional. In contrast, it means picking, choosing and abstracting rhythm from both worlds In order to get the houses that match With the lifestyle of modern Japan, it was curious and constantly changed the mixture of deep innate habits and technology 21. century. Today, for example, a young couple like Fujivakis may want more privacy than their neighbors than their parents, but inside the house are comfortable with less. “Of course we need privacy,” says Umebayshi, whose four sleeps, together in one room “But it is more of a state of mind.”
To attract potential customers, FOB homes are plugally built into the FOB COOP store on Toki Toni Aoiama Street, main technical lining with corporate seat and high-end interior stores. Although hidden behind the racks with cooking and bath towels, demolition is responding to FOB homes on full size models that can be visited in salons throughout the country throughout the country. Looking in a bathroom or ascending to the bedpiece, the potential homeowners can get the essence of the home of the FOB. If it does not sell them on the idea, maybe the company brochures and postcards will be. Undoubtedly, the base of the established and respectable FOB brand assures customers and provides a built-in marketing and distribution channel, which helps retain costs. So far, the word is mouth, favorable print coverage and www.fobhomes.com do a good job of spreading words. Open house at the Fujivakis house soon after completing in March 2000. Nor is it hurting. Two weeks of architectural tools, curiosity seekers and people in the neighborhood stretch through the house, equipped with furniture and domestic channels from FOB COOP.
Through Japan there are huge tracts home housing from the 60s and 70s that will soon have to be replaced. According to the Ministry of Building, only 15 percent of homes in Japan last for more than 30 years. Umebayishi wants to see that 100 of them were replaced by FOB homes a year. Specifically, this is just a drop in the bucket. But FOB Homes could have a far broader influence proprusion of ways to introduce all types of other architectural assertive standardized houses. Everything will need is 100 potential homeowners with good taste.
