Express View on architecture that binds : An open plan
Few design manifestos are as eloquent as a certain summer cottage, built in 1975 by architect Riken Yamamoto, in the woods near Nagano in Japan. A long living space which is also a terrace, thanks to the lack of walls, with discrete rooms for sleeping and cooking, and a single roof covering them all, Yamakawa Villa is a building in constant communication with its environment. In the winter, when the family it was built for is back in the city, animals from the surrounding woods walk in. A structure that, through its physical openness, encourages communication and community, the cottage represents the central idea of Yamamoto’s career, one which has fetched him the Pritzker Prize this year. He is the ninth Japanese architect to win architecture’s most prestigious honour .
Modest to look at, Yamamoto’s structures may seem like a surprise addition in a roster that features “starchitects” such as Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas and IM Pei, designers of spectacular, almost bombastically ambitious buildings. Yet, the 2024 laureate ’s vision of a world where people live as a community and not as individuals boxed off in their own little spaces, is ambitious in a quiet and unassuming way. If the general trend of architecture since the 20th century has been towards atomised living, Yamamoto’s buildings, with their transparent — even absent — walls and communal spaces, hark back to an older, more social way of life.
From the chawls of Mumbai, in which “kholis” share a corridor, to the sidewalk cafes and bookshops of Europe, spaces come to life when the line dividing the “outside” from the “inside” is blurred . This has been recognised by other architects, too, including champions of human-scale structures like BV Doshi and Charles Correa. For many critics of the sealed-off style of architecture that is so dominant today, which strips cities of individuality and makes spaces less conducive to conviviality , the solution lies in their vision. One building at a time, they help bring people together.