住めば都

A couple of links to explore later:

Welcome to Your Home Sweet Office

Budget Makeover: Home Office Heroics

From the Washington Post of May 6, 2006 comes Good Kitchen Layout, Just a Few Steps Away, with some good tips on choosing (or designing) a kitchen. To summarize, the main takeaways for me were:

My main concern for the kitchen is that it isn’t too small, or feel too cramped. I would love to cook together with Naoko (don’t know if she feels the same way), and in general I want to feel comfortable in there as I would like to get back to baking, and cooking once in a while.

As part of Naoko and I’s efforts to get competing plans so we can make the best decision for building the house, we visiting Atelier Labyrinth Architects in an office at Kita Akabane. The architect’s actual house is just a few blocks from here, and we had long maintained the possibility of talking to the architect when the house project became more of a reality. We went to the house yesterday (thinking the architect’s office was there as well, the website intimated as much) but was told we needed to meet with him at the Kita Akabane office. So we did that today.

It was just an initial exploratory meeting, but both Naoko and I had a very positive vibe about the lead architect (芳賀 敏夫 - HAGA Toshio). I think he appreciated our “predicament” in terms of the division of the space, and seemed to be sensible with respect to how necessary half of the second floor was to the in-laws. He also had some interesting initial ideas about how to create the space (kitchen and bath on 3rd floor, for starters). He was informative about some of the issues involving inspection and city bureaucracy (it is easier from inspection pov not to have a loan, for example). And while perhaps a bit superficial on my part, I appreciated that he seemed rather immersed in architecture and its traditions (books on Richard Meier, Luis Barragan, FLW, for example, were prominent on his overloaded bookshelves). I also was impressed that he wanted to know exactly where the new land is, so that he can visit it in person, making a point to mention that it was an important part of the process.

He’s been featured at least twice on television programs, and gave us videos to look at of these. And he wants to meet the mother-in-law sooner than later. As he explained it, it is often the case that the young couple comes to him wanting such and such a house, but that one hits a wall when one starts to talk with the in-laws. So naturally he doesn’t want to get too far involved in the project without meeting at least okaasan.

All in all, very positive and energizing. However, somewhat predictably, the in-laws don’t seem to be overly impressed by images of past houses and the videos, and made some mention (I wasn’t around, this is via Naoko) that the houses were “重厚じゃない” (juukou ja nai, or not stately enough). I think it will be an uphill battle to sway them from anything other than Shimokawa, which doesn’t make me feel very positive about all this, other considerations aside.

After our second visit to Shimokawa Architect, it came out that mother-in-law is expecting to have access to the second floor to hang laundry and futons, and for her second daughter to use the washitsu when she visits. This had been mentioned before by Naoko a few months ago, and I had been adamant that I wasn’t going to accept that. I said the same this time.

This then led the m-i-l to want half of the second floor outright, which is not how the current plan is drawn up (to say nothing of the fact that it has always been envisioned that we would have the 2nd and 3rd floors). So this led to a big discussion, argument, what have you. As it stands now, they want 1.5 floors, and want Shimokawa Architect to re-do his plan for this, and want us to look at other architects.

On Saturday (May 6th) we went back to Shimokawa Architect. We had met with him the week before to go over a plan he created for the in-laws. He had made changes to the plan based on that meeting. For us, that meant looking at the washitsu (adding a tokonoma, for example), and seeing about the possibility of having the laundry room double as a darkroom (i.e. be able to use it as such with minimal effort). Instead of creating a multi-purpose darkroom, however, he actually created a separate room. All well and good, but this then created a problem with doors and Naoko and I were a bit surprised that he hadn’t thought this out so well.

We (meaning I) also asked him some general type questions about construction (hybrid post-and-beam and 2×4), time frame, oversight of builders, etc. All in all a generally positive meeting, with a design I could live with. I think in terms of attention to detail, and documenting the process, they’re very impressive. On the other hand, I’m not sure how creative he is, in fact. His own house, to my (untutored) eye, is not very impressive. It seems fairly run of the mill. So I have lingering doubts about him….

However…. (see next post)

This is mainly here as a reminder to research aspects of building a home theater (and electronic home, in general), and to hold links for further study.

Home Theater
Home Theater Setup Guides from Audioholics
Home Theater on a budget
Custom Home Theater from About.com
Home Theater Forum
Home Theater Design from Repair Home mag

For some reason, the in-laws somewhere along the line decided they weren’t so opposed to a custom-built home rather than ordering one off the shelves from one of the big house makers. Naturally this is a good thing as far as I’m concerned and one less thing we have to “argue” about. They met with a local architect (saw his ad in the newspaper) and got a plan from him, which seems to me fairly straightforward. All of us went over there last night and discussed changes, most of which are minor. We (or me, rather) also communicated my concerns about the appearance of the house, and I think the architect sees where I’m coming from with respect to wanting something vaguely Japanese looking, while also realizing that this is probably not what the in-laws had in mind, and therefore he’s going to need to be creative.

All in all I had a favorable impression of them and I think he respects my interest in (and knowledge about) Japanese culture. The in-laws like him, so of course that’s important. But the problem is that they like him too much, or rather, they seem ready and willing to sign on the dotted line without even considering other alternatives, other proposals, etc. This leaves me in the typical contrary position of saying “whoa, hold your horses, let’s not get carried away just yet”. Frankly it shocks me that these folks have not heard about “due diligence,” and just the idea of researching this guy, getting references, etc. seems to be something no one other than myself has thought of.

My father-in-law actually said that “no one” does what these guys do, which is to take a customers wants and realize that with a design, which of course is nonsense. Yes, most folks building a new house do it the standard way, go to the biggies and order something more or less off the shelf. No different than America or most places no doubt. But that doesn’t mean there are independent architects in Japan.

In fact, back when I started this blog, in December of 2004, Naoko and I visited an outfit called “Weekend Homes” at their Yoyogi offices in Tokyo. Basically what they do is hook-up prospective customers with a network of architects, and over the internet have a design competition. (An explanation of their system in English is here.) After answering a detailed survey on the internet, Weekend Homes will solicit they network of 1000 architects to design a home meeting (or attempting to, at any rate) what we’re looking for. We’ll then be able to view those plans over the Internet, for free. Only at the point where we actually signed on with an architect would we have to pay any money (roughly $5,250) to Weekend Homes. There would then be a separate competition among construction companies called an “Estimate Competition”.

We’re hoping to start this process this week (it’s free, after all), and see about finding other architects as well. I have a feeling it’ll be an uphill battle to sway the in-laws from the de facto first choice, but we’ll see.

There was some discussion tonight when talking to the prospective architect about the color of the outside (外観, gaikan, exterior appearance). Following up on links from when I started this blog, I came across this page from Polus:

和の色

Too bad the small pics can’t be viewed larger.

It’s been almost a year and a half since I started this blog, and well, precious little has happened in most of that time, to be honest. But with the new year (2006) plans for the new house have started to slowly come into some semblance of a realistic shape.

The city has finally told us that our turn has come, and indeed it looks like our current house will be demolished sometime this Fall, which will necessitate us moving to temporary housing nearby. Unfortunately, for reasons I have yet to fully understand, the city wants to finish re-doing this street before we will be able to even start building the new place, even though are new house will be on land several hundred meters away.

But progress is being made, and I’m hoping I’ll be able to return back to this and keep it updated, and to utilize it as a sort of scrapbook of ideas more than anything else. In the meantime I’ve copied over the posts from the original blog just for continuity’s sake. Stay tuned….

Last Saturday (Dec. 11) the eager salesman from Polus (see previous post) picked up Naoko, Kaika and I and drove us over to Yono, to take a look at a Polus-built house. This was a recently completed house built on 30 坪 (tsubo, roughly 3.31 square meters) of land, 3 stories, and for two families with separate entrances – in other words, exactly what we want to build ourselves.

One of the problems with visiting model home parks and the like is that none of those homes bear any relation to what ours would be like in terms of size, they’re all about twice as big, and certainly none of them are 二世帯住宅 (nisetai juutaku, duplex house) which is what we want (er, require).

The design of the house from the exterior was modern and not so appealing, and the entry way was nothing to write home about, in fact it seemed to be at odds with the modern design, but inside I quite liked the house. We went in through the upstairs family’s door, but we realized that there was actually an interior door that connected the downstairs “flat” with the upstairs house, at the foot of the stairs. Reminded me a bit of a connecting door in hotel suites and dorm rooms. I hadn’t thought of this before but as long as noise wasn’t a problem, and we established strict rules about entering this door (both for us and the in-laws), I think the door is a good idea – at some point it may be that the in-laws are no longer with us and this would allow us to create an entire 3-floor house with little or no work.

The grandmother lived in this particular first-floor flat (she was a widow) and she was quite at home there, apparently. I was surprised at how much space there actually was, and there was a kitchen and a bathroom (and separate toilet), with the bathroom big enough to have a washer in there. Granted she was single and in our situation there would be two people living on this one floor, I think it could work. (Mother-in-law was sick so she did not visit the place with us, unfortunately). (One idea would be to build that basement storage area we saw the week before, and perhaps eliminate one of the closets to create even more living room.)

Upstairs on the second floor it was quite roomy, with an open plan (no separation between the kitchen and living room). The kitchen was rather wide and comfortable.The bathroom was on this floor and I was surprised by how roomy it was, with lots of space for a washer. On the third floor, there were three bedrooms, one for the family’s son, one for the parents, and a guest room. The guest room was a bit smaller than the other two, but all were comfortable. In the child’s room, there was a very deep closet. Adjadcent to the parent’s bedroom was a small area between that room and the walk-in closet, kind of nook, which was the father’s office. The walk-in closet was rather large (perfect for my office!).

A few other misc. details: The father worked for Tokyo Gas so the house was a gas house. They had installed heaters underneath the floors. The washitsu was raised about a foot above the main floor (on the second floor), I rather liked this as the ledge provided a nice place to sit. They were able to fit one car space onto the property, just like we want to. The second floor had one narrow balcony extending the entire length of one side. Wide enough maybe to hang laundry or keep trash, but not really for putting a chair out there. There was a balcony on the third floor, along the width of the house, about the same narrow-ness.

I liked the way the two entrances were on the first floor, and the stairs to the upper “house” were internal rather than external as I often see. It reminded me of Victorian flats in SF which was coincidental because I had been saying earlier to Naoko that perhaps as we try to think how we can create a two-family house, we could use SF’s Victorian’s as an example, since almost all of them these days have been divided so that instead of one large house, they are two or three separate houses, with two or three doors fronting the sidewalk, each entrance leading to a separate floor. (Here’s an example).

All in all, a very positive excursion: we got to see first hand a house with almost the exactly same dimensions, layout, and living situation as what we want to build, and we got some ideas of how the space can be used.