Between and behind the high-rise buildings in the center of Tokyo, countless detached single-family homes form the housing landscape of the city. Many of them are vacant. But since the early 2000s, a new living and housing model is emerging: More and more urban Japanese are living in converted single-family homes together with other singles in what are known as shea hausu (Japanese for share house). This new lifestyle is marketed with the help of digital shea hausu platforms. Not only private homeowners but also large real estate companies are offering this new housing model, which promises community to Tokyo residents living alone. This is a remarkable development, especially for Japan, because the shea hausu contradicts both the socio-spatial order of the modern two-generation family home by living together with strangers as well as the “scrap and build” logic of the construction industry in Japan. To preserve existing residential buildings by implementing community building programs such as the shea hausu model was also taken up by the state as a positive measure against single-person households and vacant properties in a post-growth society, and thus became part of a national urban development policy.
The Japanese shea hausu model mirrors the socio-economic, demographic and ecological challenges that the country is facing since the burst of the Japanese economic bubble. The aim of this research project is to shed light on the tense relationship between programmatic architectural production and social dynamics, and thus to gain new insights into how architectures organize and are organized.