| Architect Osamu Ishiyama is at the forefront of a movement to cut the cost of building a house, and he leads by example-he's building his own.
Architect Osamu Ishiyama firmly believes Japanese housing prices are crazy. Few would argue. But even fewer would be willing to try Ishiyama's suggested alternative. Getting widespread interest in do-it-yourself home building "requires a transformation in consumer values and beliefs," Ishiyama admits. Still, he's hoping his own home-building efforts will have an effect on construction practices.
Ishiyama, who is a professor in the Architecture Department at Waseda University's School of Engineering, gets his inspiration from the Akihabara district of Tokyo, of all places. In the late 1940's, Akihabara gained fame as a center for electronics parts and components. Engineering students from nearby universities bought parts to build radios, which they then sold to friends and neighbors for pocket money. Ishiyama recalls that in the late 1950's, "In one day in Akiyabara you could buy everthing you needed to build a TV."
While Akihabara is now better known for sales of finished products, it is still a center for parts and components. In his 1984 book, "Akihabara-Sentient Reflection on housing," Ishiyama argued that Akihabara's function as a market for anything and everthing electronic, sold in a truly competitive, free-market atmosphere helped keep electronics prices low and quality high. "In Akihabara, the comsumer is in a stronger position than the makers," he says.
There has never really been a similar market for houses and housing materials, nor has there been a strong do-it-youself tradition in Japan, though that has been changing recently. Ishiyama believes the lack of an Akihabara-type market for materials and houses is one reason for Japan's crazy prices.
Although he would like to see house prices driven down, he does not think mass production is the right answer. Instead, he argues that with a little thought and personal effort, people can build their own homes, at least in part. He outlined this possibility in a book titled, "If You Can Read a Book and You Have a Brain, You Can Build Your Own Home." The approach partly relies on using unconventional materials and strategies in building homes. Ishiyama believes this would lead to more individualistic and less expensive houses.
This focus on using unconventional materials and approaches has been a major theme of Ishiyama's career. One of his earliest projects was Gin'an, a house formed from a length of giant corrugated steel tubing, which is typically used to carry creeks under roads. For the Rias Ark Museum of Art in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture, Ishiyama used riveted aluminium sheets of the sort typically used in aircraft. This allowed for more complex curves and unusual shapes than conventional aluminium building panels.
Ishiyama's most ambitious home-building experiment is now under construction in Tokyo's Setagaya-ku. The three-story plus basement building will have living space for Ishiyama and his family on the two upper floors, a gallery on the ground floor and his architectural office in an enormous basement. He calls the project "Setagaya Mura(village)" because of its blending of work and living spaces.
Ishiyama's unconventional approach started with planning. He bought a lot with an existing 40-year-old, wooden one-story house, and while leaving that in place he has built his new house around it. The basement design studio was dug out around the existing building. And the upper floors of the new house have been constructed above the old house, supported on four mammoth 20 cm diameter steel posts with a lacework of bracing. Once the building is completed, he will demolish the older wooden house.
Ishiyama isn't really building the entire house with his own hands. He has acted as his own general contractor, hiring specialist subconstractors for the concrete work and steel erection. But he and a small band of students and assistants are doing a substantial amount of the remaining interior and exterior finishing work.
Once again, Ishiyama is adapting unconventional materials to suit his own design interests. One exterior wall, for example, is made of two sheets of aluminum bent around regularly-spaced air ducts and fastened together. Bending the sheets around a tube results in a ribbed surface that adds both visual interest and structural rigidity. Another part of the exterior is faced with the material typically used in wet suits. Ishiyama also used aluminum cans and sheeting to form honeycomb floor panels.
The house has been under construction for about one and a half years and Ishiyama expects it to take another year and a half to finish. He hasn't revealed how much the building costs, but says it will be about one-third what it would have cost if built by a general contractor. He notes that while only a few people have followed his example, his books and current project have attracted attention. Ishiyama 's efforts are paving the way for more people to take at least some of the building process into their own hands, and keep more money in their wallets.
"Setagaya Mura"
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