Once, the Japanese had a powerfully developed sense of community and connection to neighbors, in both city neighborhoods and the thousands of rural villages. As well, they lso had an ancient, even sacred, connection to nature, especially with trees and forests. However, urban living in Japan is such that most urbanites live in live in tiny box-like apartments in impersonal concrete high-rises, with very little actual connection to neighbors or nature. Land in Japan is so expensive that very few apartments include landscaping.
There are some cohousing projects that strive to change all of that.
Kyodo no Mori (“Forest of Kyodo”)
Located in the Setagawa district of Tokyo, Kyodo no Mori is a 12-unit, three story building located on a tiny, one fifth of an acre lot. The building features vine-covered balconies, solar-powered water pumping and solar heating, and a rooftop wetlands for graywater recycling.
On average, each unit is about 970 sq. ft. each. Most units are owned by residents, as opposed to rented. Shared space includes the outdoor space in the ground-floor courtyard, a second-floor terrace and a rooftop garden (complete with a barbeque grill surrounded by built-in seating for community cook-outs). This project, incidentally, was one of Japan’s first cohousing community.
One of the innovations of this project was borne early on. Inspired by the participatory process used by Danish architects during cohousing’s infancy back in the 1960s, Kyodo no Mori’s designers met with its future residents, and asked them to actively participate in the project’s creation by detailing what they’d like to see in their ideal apartments. The first phase of this participatory process involved querying individual households, then small groups comprised of several households, then lastly, the entire group. If a problem concerned one household, it affected the entire community, and solutions for all residents were therefore applied.
For a quick spin of fun, try online slots at casinos that accept US players.