Makoto Tanijiri is a young Japanese architect whose practice, Suppose Design Office, is shooting inexorably upwards. Today we look at two of his recent houses by way of an introduction to his work. Both manage to be radical and both are capable of shocking their audience.
From outside, The House in Miyoshi looks like the scrag-end of a cinema, or perhaps the rear of a theatre that has been extended here and there. It appears to have no windows and it is painted a mid battleship grey. This apparently haphazard character reveals nothing of what goes on inside and one might argue has little relationship to its context.
But then what is its context? It sits by a railway line on the edge of some sprawl next to the most pedestrian and tedious of suburban houses. It might not give much to the site, but it takes nothing away!
It is an introspective house. Something like a quiet man that disturbs nobody, but who gets on with his work. To extend the analogy, we later learn the man is a maths genius… and now we begin to understand the house in Miyoshi. Read more
