On the edge of a major thoroughfare in Yokohama, Japan, an entirely glass corner building slopes down a steep street. Dozens of potted orchids adorn the window sills, others pile up wherever there is a little space. The flowers have been pouring in continuously, we will be told, once we have passed the door, since Riken Yamamoto, the owner of the place, received the Pritzker Prize on Tuesday March 5. He designed this small building with mezzanines to house his architectural agency. It is located about a hundred meters from the house where he spent his childhood, and where he still lives.
What do you expect from your new status as a “Pritzkerized” architect?
I hope this award will help make my voice heard. What interests me is strengthening communities. This is the challenge of the association that I created, the Local Area Republic Labo, with which we give an award every year to architects for housing projects that work for the community. Communities are precious. They all have their character. I believe that architecture can give them back this strength that they once had in Japan and that they lost after the Second World War, when “zoning”, this way of isolating activities from each other, invented in West, has established itself in Japanese cities. I believe that architecture has the power to transform society.
How can architecture help create communities?
By creating, in housing projects, shared public spaces, but also by integrating work spaces inside the housing, which residents can use themselves, or rent to others. The cost of building maintenance continues to rise in Japan. People are sometimes forced to abandon their homes for this reason. A neighbor who opens a business in your house can be a solution to getting by.
Was the large social housing complex that you designed in Tokyo Bay, with Kengo Kuma and Toyo Ito, built with this in mind?
Absolutely. The buildings are fourteen stories high. Nearly a thousand inhabitants live there. On the ground floor, there are shops, a nursery, services. A wooden footbridge, on the first floor, gives access to the accommodation… It’s a public space that works well, I think, an urban landscape not so bad. As the chief architect of the project, I wanted people to be able to partition their homes as they wished to integrate work spaces or a small business. It worked for a while, until the building manager decided he no longer wanted the system. Today, the housing law prevents such projects from being considered, but it must be revised this year. I wrote an article calling for it to evolve.
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