Riverine House

(unbuilt)

The term “voluntary communality” is widely used to refer to an individual’s intention to actively participate in a public situation. As part of a research study called the Public House Project, this work set out to explain the communal concept by introducing the perspective of voluntary communality to the tangible area of a space, and investigating the potential of a new housing complex that emerged as a result. As a case study in the project, Riverine House created voluntary communality through the design for a detached house in a preexisting urban area.
The lot abuts a riverbed sandwiched between two roads. The house itself is designed as a layered structure consisting of a set of public and private functions, scattered across each floor in an effort (public service) to incorporate communality into a private area. In exchange, the residents’ “ethical occupation” of the riverbed for personal gain (as I call this illegal act) could be feasible anywhere in Japan. In other words, this was a kind of thought experiment using the riverbed that stretched in front of the house to determine the limits of the tacit approval of unlawful occupation.