Discovering the Depth of the Walls: Prefabricated Timber Houses in Interwar Japan

Abstract

Architects’ perennial discussions on the walls of the Japanese house started in the early twentieth century, when calls for the rationalization and modernization of people’s everyday lives became the impetus for their engagement in housing design. One of their solutions to this sociocultural issue was the introduction of western prefabricated wall construction, structurally contrasting with the conventional post-and-beam construction. This architectonic approach to modernizing Japanese life and dwelling was further activated by modernism, and oriented toward the standardization and industrialization of housing. This essay focuses particularly on the interwar years, when some modernist architects, including Tsuchiura Kameki, designed prefabricated houses using timber rather than steel. We explore their experimental attempts to discover the heretofore unexperienced features and meanings of panelized walls and materials, as well as the relationship between construction and architectural production. Their progressionist vision, predicting the future shift of building materials and methods, cognitively affected postwar home industrialization.