Architecture
A Renowned Modernist Turns to Tradition for His Own Home
Japanese architect Kunio Maekawa, known for his modernist style, went in a completely different direction at home
One of the least-known treasures of Japan’s fast-eroding building heritage is the Edo-Tokyo Open-Air Architectural Museum, a 7-hectare area devoted to the preservation and presentation of prominent structures of yesteryear. Located in Koganei Park on the outskirts of western Tokyo, it was established in 1993 with some 30 relocated buildings, encompassing a variety of styles and eras, that had become no longer viable on their original sites.
Among the museum’s historical gems, which include farmhouses, middle- and upper-class urban homes, an inn, a granary, a sento (public bathhouse) and pre-war shops, is a small red wooden structure with a steeply pitched gabled roof and a bank of wood-mullioned windows, built by one of the 20th century’s architectural giants, Kunio Maekawa (1905-1986). For those familiar with his modernist landmarks – Tokyo Metropolitan Festival Hall (Tokyo Bunka Kaikan), the International House of Japan (with Junzo Sakakura and Junzo Yoshimura), Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum – it seems unlikely that this exceedingly simple, compact design could have emanated from the same drawing board.
Among the museum’s historical gems, which include farmhouses, middle- and upper-class urban homes, an inn, a granary, a sento (public bathhouse) and pre-war shops, is a small red wooden structure with a steeply pitched gabled roof and a bank of wood-mullioned windows, built by one of the 20th century’s architectural giants, Kunio Maekawa (1905-1986). For those familiar with his modernist landmarks – Tokyo Metropolitan Festival Hall (Tokyo Bunka Kaikan), the International House of Japan (with Junzo Sakakura and Junzo Yoshimura), Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum – it seems unlikely that this exceedingly simple, compact design could have emanated from the same drawing board.
Maekawa and Le Corbusier in the train heading to Hoddesdon, UK, to join the CIAM (Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne) meeting in 1951. Photo courtesy of Maekawa Associates, Architects and Engineers.
Swiss architect Le Corbusier was already a force in Europe at the time, but he was best known in the late 1920s for his residential white boxes. Despite having no real interest in these “machines for living,” Maekawa took advantage of his uncle’s residency in Paris and made the journey to the French capital after his graduation. In April 1928, he became an unpaid draftsman in Le Corbusier’s atelier, and stayed for the next 14 months. He would return to Japan and begin working for Raymond in 1930, leaving in 1935 to open his own practice.
The architect found Corbusian modernism easily adaptable to Japan’s cultural and climatic context, and would become one of the 20th century’s most prolific practitioners. But Maekawa’s use of concrete was reserved for commercial and government buildings. In his residential designs, he prioritised warmth and intimacy, and incorporated premodern Japanese elements to heighten these features.
The lasting influence of Frank Lloyd Wright
Swiss architect Le Corbusier was already a force in Europe at the time, but he was best known in the late 1920s for his residential white boxes. Despite having no real interest in these “machines for living,” Maekawa took advantage of his uncle’s residency in Paris and made the journey to the French capital after his graduation. In April 1928, he became an unpaid draftsman in Le Corbusier’s atelier, and stayed for the next 14 months. He would return to Japan and begin working for Raymond in 1930, leaving in 1935 to open his own practice.
The architect found Corbusian modernism easily adaptable to Japan’s cultural and climatic context, and would become one of the 20th century’s most prolific practitioners. But Maekawa’s use of concrete was reserved for commercial and government buildings. In his residential designs, he prioritised warmth and intimacy, and incorporated premodern Japanese elements to heighten these features.
The lasting influence of Frank Lloyd Wright
Young architects show their true colours when they design their own habitats, and Maekawa’s first home, built during World War II, is no exception. One has only to take in the plunging neo-Japanesque roofline, the oya entryway to the front path and the dramatic glass doors and mullioned windows – facing south, with contrasting akari shoji screens to filter light – to grasp the East-West synthesis at play. As historian Kevin Reynolds sees it, the house is Maekawa’s “most explicitly traditionalist residential design of the period.”
Some historians, intent on maintaining Le Corbusier’s vaunted position in the Maekawa canon, have suggested that the home’s size and materials were selected only because of the restrictions imposed by the Japanese government, which was diverting most construction materials to the war effort. But Maekawa’s family ties had enabled him to go ahead with the project despite the war, and even to build slightly larger (110.56 square metres) than the limit allowed by law (100 square metres).
As for the materials, before tackling his own home, he had lived in the Nonomiya Apartments, a well-known 1936 modernist design by Kameki Tsuchiura, a Frank Lloyd Wright acolyte. Despite his enthusiasm for the innovations wrought by modernism, Maekawa had found Tsuchiura’s concrete complex extremely uncomfortable. Thus his house made liberal use of cypress and other wood, and since Maekawa didn’t like paint, oil-based stain was used on the exterior surfaces.
According to Kosaburo Sakitani, the main draughtsman on the project, Maekawa rarely spoke in conceptual terms about the designs that would bear his name, and this habit extended even to his own home. He initially asked staff member Miho Hamaguchi to draw up plans, but wasn’t pleased when she suggested a nagaya-style horizontal rowhouse. In 1941, Sakitani was put in charge of finishing the basic designs.
As for the materials, before tackling his own home, he had lived in the Nonomiya Apartments, a well-known 1936 modernist design by Kameki Tsuchiura, a Frank Lloyd Wright acolyte. Despite his enthusiasm for the innovations wrought by modernism, Maekawa had found Tsuchiura’s concrete complex extremely uncomfortable. Thus his house made liberal use of cypress and other wood, and since Maekawa didn’t like paint, oil-based stain was used on the exterior surfaces.
According to Kosaburo Sakitani, the main draughtsman on the project, Maekawa rarely spoke in conceptual terms about the designs that would bear his name, and this habit extended even to his own home. He initially asked staff member Miho Hamaguchi to draw up plans, but wasn’t pleased when she suggested a nagaya-style horizontal rowhouse. In 1941, Sakitani was put in charge of finishing the basic designs.
Apparently quite captivated by three oak trees that were on the property, Maekawa had purchased a plot in Kamiosaki, Shinagawa Ward, for his inaugural dwelling. At the time, the Kameki Tsuchiura house, located nearby in Meguro Ward, was the talk of modernist homes. Tsuchiura had spent nearly five years working with Wright, first as an intern on the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, then as an apprentice on various projects in California and Wisconsin. He had returned to Japan in 1926, determined to help improve Japanese housing. Taking a cue from the ‘textile block’ houses Wright was building in Los Angeles, Tsuchiura pursued standardisation and efficiency, gradually embracing the International style for its functional, rational and economic attributes. His 1935 home was a modernist white box, but it featured Wrightian vertical interlocking spaces, with a narrow loft floating above a soaring, double-height living room that flowed out into the garden through four sliding doors.
Although the Tsuchiura house had a flat roof that purposely broke with Japanese tradition, Sakitani was partial to its other qualities, and devised a plan to Maekawa’s liking. Symmetrical simplicity itself, one enters the home from a door on the north, with hard beechwood floors designed for entry with one’s shoes on – an unusual feature in Japan, where shoes are always removed in the foyer. According to Sakitani, Maekawa usually travelled by car, so his shoes remained dirt-free. (Shoes-off became the norm later, perhaps after he married Miyo Miura in August 1945, at war’s end.)
Just to the left of the entranceway, through a swinging door, is the home’s triumphal open-plan room, a living room-salon with double-height windows, its airy spaces delineated by contemporary furniture.
Maekawa designed the furnishings and light fixtures in Western style, and had furniture upholstered in cambric fabric, a lightweight cotton textile.
Up an open stairway from the living room is a small mezzanine loft with display cases acting as an interface with the first floor. The roof reaches its highest pitch above the loft, providing the necessary height. Although used primarily as a study, it is also where Maekawa stored his furniture designs.
The space was undoubtedly influenced not only by Tsuchiura’s loft, but also a similar one in Antonin Raymond’s 1933 summer house in Karuizawa, which featured rough-hewn wooden poles as supports. Access to his loft was via a curving rampway, however, rather than direct stairs.
The cosy dining area, with its Maekawa-designed lamp, table and chairs, is on the north side of the great room. A pass-through from the kitchen facilitates serving.
Browse more Asian-inspired architecture and interiors
Browse more Asian-inspired architecture and interiors
The passthrough is an unusual innovation for the time. The kitchen, which is on the northeast, features a modern, Western design, both in its furnishings, its window and its flow of space.
The study in the home’s southwest corner, at the end of the entrance corridor, was designed also to accommodate guests, and so comes with a sink in the closet – a unique solution.
Maekawa’s bedroom is in the southeast corner, across from the study, and is also Western style, with a bed and ample closet space.
Maekawa designed the bathrooms in Western style as well. For this one, he chose all-black tile to contrast with the white toilet bowl.
The sliding shutters on the south side of the open-plan room can be stowed in a unique door pocket that pivots 90 degrees, effectively disappearing when the home is open to the elements. Metal was in short supply in 1941, so the door rails were created of hardwood. There is a corresponding set of windows on the north side, as well as a bay window on the loft level, all of which allow the room to be literally flooded with light. Space flows, unimpeded, through the room, and from front to back garden.
When first constructed, there were circular poles on the north and south sides of the home, leading some to suggest that Maekawa was referencing Le Corbusier’s idea of piloti (piers, or columns). But Sakitani implies that, although his boss may have viewed them that way, these pillars were instead influenced by the Ise Grand Shrine, one of the Shinto religion’s holiest sites, which is rebuilt every 20 years. He had visited and been deeply impressed by Ise in 1940, shortly before he started working on the house.
The chief carpenter during the Maekawa house construction had also worked with Tsuchiura, and he erected one Ise- (or piloti-) inspired wooden pole at the centre of the south facade of the home, with a shorter one on the north facade. The house made liberal use of cypress and other wood. Since Maekawa didn’t like paint, oil-based stain was used on the exterior surfaces.
The chief carpenter during the Maekawa house construction had also worked with Tsuchiura, and he erected one Ise- (or piloti-) inspired wooden pole at the centre of the south facade of the home, with a shorter one on the north facade. The house made liberal use of cypress and other wood. Since Maekawa didn’t like paint, oil-based stain was used on the exterior surfaces.
In May 1945, Maekawa’s office in Ginza burned down following an air raid. He moved operations to the Kamiosaki house for the next nine years, until 1954. Desks and drafting tables were brought into the living room and the loft study, which could only accommodate four of the tables. The downstairs study was converted for meetings with customers, as well as for the staff to take breaks.
The Maekawas began renovating the home in 1956, reinforcing the foundations, adding X-shaped trusses to the south side, swapping the round pillar on the south with a square one, expanding the kitchen, upgrading the bathroom (and changing the black tile to brown), and building a garage. They may also have brought certain heirlooms out of storage, as the stucco walls of the living room were reportedly adorned with paintings by Miro, Picasso and Shiko Munakata after 1955.
Let Japanese shoji screens slide in
Let Japanese shoji screens slide in
In 1973, the house was disassembled when Maekawa decided to build a larger structure on the property, and its parts were put into storage at his summer home in Karuizawa. They were still in good shape some 20 years later, so were used in 1996 to rebuild the Maekawa house at the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum. The beautiful structure, a sublime exemplification of the best of Eastern tradition and Western modernism, has remained the highlight of any visit to the park. It is open to the public every day except Monday. (Open Monday when a national holiday falls on Monday, then closed the following day.)
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Are you familiar with Maekawa’s architectural style? What do you think of this variation in his work? Share your thoughts in the Comments.
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But Maekawa had spent five years with Antonin Raymond, the former apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright who followed in his mentor’s footsteps by opening the eyes of Japanese architects to the possibilities of their own tradition. Maekawa signed on with Raymond (centre in this 1935 photo, with Maekawa kneeling third from left), after returning in 1930 from Paris, where he had worked for a time in the atelier of Le Corbusier, and was instrumental in helping the Czech-born architect develop a unique fusion of East-West modernism in Japan. His own 1942 home became his first expression of this synthesis.
Kunio Maekawa studied architecture at what is now the University of Tokyo during a period of great change, when Japan was seeking to define a new national identity. In architecture, there was much debate about what role tradition should play. Vernacular architecture had always favoured modular planning, flexible space use and simplicity. As a student, Maekawa embraced the shinkenchiku (new architecture) movement and its commitment to exploiting new materials and technology, as well as sustaining local architectural features in the face of international influences.