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FROM the heavy stones at the base of their main pillars to the thatch that typically covers their crowns, minka reflect their native landscape. Some rooflines are steeply angled to shed snow, others flare as gently as a skirt in a breeze. Their flexible frames have weathered earthquakes since the 1700s, but urbanization has nearly done them in. The engawa connects the outside to the inside and is the perfect place to situate oneself on a beautiful balmy day. When wandering between the garden and the living room, the engawa is a marriage between the inside and outside.
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The tsuboniwa (a tiny garden) as seen in machiya in Kyoto facilitated ventilation and lighting. The oldest minka in Japan are the houses of the HAKOGI family and the FURUI family, both in Hyogo Prefecture, and they were already being called 'Sennenya' (a thousand year old house) in the Edo Period. In fact they are not a thousand years old, but they are considered old enough to have been built in the Muromachi Period. Floor Plan C is a Japanese home that showcases an ample living space for a bigger family. With multiple bedrooms to avail of, any multi-generational clan can make this house a home.
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Farmhouses that would otherwise be destroyed are being reincarnated as homes, restaurants and galleries. House of the EGAWA family, Nirayama yakusho (government office) (Izunokuni City); part of its construction materials are said to be from medieval times. Oshi-ire can be closets, or the little compartments above closets, used for expensive kimonos, beddings, or out-of-season clothes. These mostly hidden storage compartments are typical in a classic Japanese home.
A Niigata Farmhouse
Built in 1852, the farmhouse was lived in until 1988, although some renovations had taken place, including the replacement of the thatched roof with tiles, and the addition of aluminium-framed windows. The home was dismantled and moved to its present site, where it was reassembled and restored to its original state. The doma is a ground-level room, often with a floor of packed earth, but sometimes tile or stone.
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But a traditional Japanese minka would have these rooms on the list below, despite differing sizes, geography, and climate. Each bedroom is smaller than what you would find in a typical western home. However, this floor plan may not be suitable for cities like Tokyo, where space is at a high premium. The toilet and bath are distinct, indicative of most Japanese homes where one is kept separate from the other. An exhibition hall has detailed models that show different styles of Japanese construction.
Like modern architecture around the world, Japanese architecture today depicts a modern global approach, aesthetics…
A surprising intellectual leap in the design of Japanese homes took place during the 14th century, so powerful that it resonated for the next 600 years. Around the time that European houses were becoming crammed with exotic bric-a-brac, Zen priests were sweeping away even the furniture from their homes. What was left was a simple flexible space that could be used according to the needs of the hour. This is largely why Minka’s are designed with easily replaceable materials and dual-functional housing structures such as sliding walls to optimize the smaller space that they’re working with.

raumus transforms thatch-roofed minka into home + studio in japan - Designboom
raumus transforms thatch-roofed minka into home + studio in japan.
Posted: Thu, 08 Sep 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]
This is the perfect area to enjoy a cup of tea, listen to birds trilling, and breathe in the fresh air. The engawa is a very special and integral part of a traditional Japanese home. It does not simply serve as a terrace, but the engawa connects the living room to the garden. This porch-like structure is on the outside and functions as both an entryway and a corridor. In western homes, this would translate to either the attic or the basement where we stash random stuff.
This is probably the biggest difference that sets minka apart from shoin or sukuya zukuri. In minka, people cooked inside the house for themselves – which is what we all do today. However, as only rich people lived in sukiya zukuri, servants prepared meals for them, and kitchen areas weren’t close to where family members of the master were around. Upper class people’s houses almost hid messier part of life and kept everything spic and span.
We love the fact that a Minka can be exquisitely designed, rapidly “printed,” packed into a cargo container, shipped and assembled anywhere– in the world. As you wander between the fronds, the Minka house will come into view. Meaning ‘houses of the people’, ‘minka’ describes the simple homes of country-dwellers common in Japan until the mid-20th century. Unlike sukiya zukuri, most minka started with doma (dirt floor) where you had workshops and a kitchen area. It was where people would take care of the tools they used for work, processed crops and prepared meals.
The roof tiles commonly seen nowadays on traditional-style homes in Japan became common during the latter part of the eighteenth century. Other traditional roofing materials include timber shingles called kokera-buki, and hiwada-buki, shingles made from cypress bark. For floor material, Minka Houses usually uses Tatami, a type of carpet made of straw and covered with a weave of a plant called ‘igusa’ (藺草). Initially, Tatami was only used in the houses of high-caste people, but over time, tatami became more widely used among commoners towards the end of the 17th century.
Fusuma use heavier paper or sometimes cloth and are opaque, serving as a more distinct barrier. Unlike walls, however, fusuma can easily be removed to rearrange space within the house. The irori, an open, sunken hearth set within a timber floor, was once a standard fixture in Japanese farm houses. The tokonoma alcove is a decorative element characteristic of the reception room of a Japanese-style home. Recessed into one wall of the room and raised slightly above floor level, it is used to display wall hangings and ikebana flower arrangements.
However, many of the important internal pillars of the building, such as the daikoku-bashira (main pillar) sit directly on the foundation stones rather than on the dodai. Columbia architecture professor Geeta Mehta, and editor-in-chief of Japanese architectural magazine Confort, Kimie Tada, offer unparalleled insights into traditional homes in Japan Style. In this gorgeously illustrated book, Mehta and Tada guide you through 20 quintessential styles of traditional Japanese architecture, from an exquisite Kyoto Machiya, to a stately country mansion in Akita.
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