Defining Your Space

The Elements of a Japanese Home

What makes a traditional Japanese home the perfect concept for a shipping container home? The typical traditional Japanese home is ideal for a shipping container build. Elements of traditional Japanese house design, long an inspiration for Western architects, can be found throughout the world.

As a general guide, the use of traditional interior design styles used by the Japanese are ideal for a shipping container home. Like a traditional home, defining your shipping container space is all about maintaining a sense of consistency, harmony, and relationship of furniture through alignment. We need to define our space by introduce particular elements that have a clear meaning or purpose.

The definition of space means allocating different interior areas for primary functions. Exampled by eating, bathing, resting, entertaining. When we consider a shipping container we need to also consider floor space be it one container, or two or more containers. Lets stroll though a traditional Japanese home to see the concept.

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A Westerners Ideal

We may not consider the Japanese traditional home as an interior design choice. We as Westerners tend to have lots of junk, including televisions, entertainment needs, beds, knickknacks and the like that we need to find storage space for. Defining our space plays an important role in creating our ambiance.

Our home is a creation to allow us to feel relaxed and comfortable. While lurking behind closed doors are rooms, garages and attics filled with our junk.

The idea of small presents to many a problem. We love our space be it outside or indoors. The confines of an enclosure is not something we enjoy. The idea of a container is for many, one of those enclosures. But it does not have to be. A container can be roomier than the traditional home. We just need to make it so.

A feeling of order and comfort within your space

By defining your space, you create a personal map within your home. When it comes to designing
your home to achieve all these valuable benefits, it may be difficult to figure out where to start.

Areas that are usually defined are:

• dining room,
• living room,
• kitchen,
• sleeping area and
• bathroom.

If you need a template for your shipping container look no further than a traditional Japanese home interior design. Simplistic, practical and extremely functional.

Not So Small Just Well Planned

Japanese homes tend to be small and situated close to one another, whether in urban or rural settings. Yet key features of traditional Japanese residential design ensure privacy, natural light, protection from the elements and contact with the outdoors. No matter the size of the house or its location.

Although most urban Japanese can’t afford single-family homes, their apartments often contain traditional features, such as soaking tubs and step-up entryways. And many Western-style homes in Japan contain a single Japanese-style room with a tatami floor. Elements of traditional Japanese house design can be found throughout the world. Here are the essential concepts.

Gated Entry

Because most residential streets in Japan lack sidewalks, the delineation between public and private space begins at a property’s gate. Traditional gates are often roofed separating the street from a hidden residence. Use of trees, in particular a old cherry tree hints at an impressive garden within the high surrounding walls. What better surround for our container home than vegetation and a well placed entry gate. Privacy and seclusion with an air of mystery.

Walled Properties

Privacy from neighboring houses is achieved through walls at the property line. Concrete block is the most common material for the walls, both in cities and villages, but some large houses boast stone walls topped with wood fences. Surrounding your container home with a concrete wall is a certainty to maintain privacy. A wall also presents an image of power, and achievement.

Tiled Roofs With Broad Eaves

Japan is a rainy country, and its roofs are designed to drain large amounts of water away from the house. The eaves allow residents to open exterior doors for ventilation without letting in the rain. What would look great on a container home would be a gabled roof with broad eaves. A surround verandah provides shade and protection from the rain.

Optimal Siting

Japanese houses are sited north-south, with the main rooms facing south, to ensure steady sunlight throughout the day. Views are ideally of mountains or water but more often of a garden. They are essential. Natural light is considered a human right in Japan for homeowners and apartment dwellers alike. Sun lite windows and glass walling or open walling on your container will ensure steady warmth and sunlight within. If you are located in the right spot, the views are magnificent.

Step-up Entryways

A transitional space between outdoors and in, the genkan is where one exchanges outdoor shoes for slippers (which are removed before stepping on tatami floors). Genkan hold shoe cupboards as well as decorative objects such as ceramics, flowers or art. They may include or face the tokonoma (alcove), where scrolls and other artwork, as well as ikebana (traditional flower arrangements), are displayed. As your container home is sitting on pylons or blocks, the space between outdoors and indoors is established. Having a genkan only enhances the atmosphere.

Exterior Hallways

In addition to connecting rooms, broad hallways known as engawa are the transition point between indoors and out. In warmer months, they function as verandas; year-round they let in light and air. With a gable roof and extended eaves we can create the engawa to transition between light and shade.

Sliding Doors

Louvered doors and plaster slitted windows (mushiko mado) are particular to machiya or traditional live-work homes. Sliding doors are space saving and work well in container homes. Slitted windows allow light and privacy and would suit your container home nicely.

Reverence for Wood

The wood in Japanese houses is often stained but never painted, since paint would cover the highly prized grain. Entire tree trunks may be used as roof beams, while the most expensive piece, often an unplaned length of Japanese cypress, is reserved for the tokonoma. Wood paneling wood look appealing in a container home. You would lose sight of the metal walls and believe your were living in a traditional pleasing home.

Straw Matting

Tatami flooring, made from woven igusa (a type of grass), is cool in summer and warm in winter. Though costly, it lasts for years because shoes are never worn indoors. Mats come in standard rectangles whose edges are bound in black cloth or, in the case of wealthy households, brocade. Did you know the Japanese measure the size of a container by the tatami. A 20ft container would take 7.7 tatami mats while a 40ft container 16.2 tatami mats.

Multipurpose Rooms

Because the traditional bedding (futon) is folded and stored in closets during the day, a single large room may be used for sitting, dining and sleeping. Flexible space and movable furniture enable small houses to comfortably accommodate families. The practicality of doing this in a container home is simplistically marvelous. Get rid of that bulky oversized bed and enjoy the more flexible room space.

Traditional Baths

In the past, many Japanese bathed in neighborhood public baths. Only relatively wealthy families could afford the expense of maintaining a furo. A furo requires not only space but enough fuel to maintain a water temperature of 100 to 108 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 to 42.2 Celsius).

Although public baths still exist, the majority of Japanese homes have their own furo, which is used only for soaking. All soaping and rinsing takes place outside the tub using handheld showers or buckets. Bathing remains an essential daily ritual in Japan.

Minimal transitions between indoors and out.

Access to the outdoors is a concept aided by easily opened sliding doors and windows. Paramount in Japanese design. This indoor-outdoor aesthetic greatly influenced modernist architects in California and around the world. A container can achieve the same result with sliding glass doors and openings. A narrow stone walkway under the eaves can separate the house from the majestic and expansive gardens.

Conclusion

Privacy, natural light and harmony with nature are enhanced through a traditional Japanese home design features. Incorporating this Japanese style and design into your container is a transition from metal box to harmony.

The point in hand is that a container can for all intense and purpose mimic the style and design of a traditional home if so desired. Internally there is no reason for a container home not to be as comfortable as a traditional home. Elements of traditional Japanese house design can be found throughout the world.

The features of container home can justly ensure privacy, natural light, protection from the elements and contact with the outdoors. It is a mater of choice and commitment. The sacrifice if any is enhancement too living with less.