In Tokyo, cars dispose of a complex network of domestic, local and metropolitan roadways. Our project aims to hack this system using the bike, and make every street in Tokyo more bikeable.
We first categorized different streets into types. Each type provides a different set of functions. Some are very straight and fast, easy to pursue through the city and others are more lively and narrow. Our goal is not to make all streets the same (as this often happens with bike lanes) but rather to maintain each type’s special character. The picture we had always in mind was one of a ski resort, where different slopes are marked out by different colors that identify very different experiences.
From the Meji Period to today the genkan (a Japanese house-entry-cum-doormat) has evolved from a space of etiquette to a functionalistic space, and nowadays to a space of convenience. In the Meji Period a representative house had three entrances with a front genkan (表玄関), an inner genkan (内玄関), and a katteguchi (an outside connecting door) in the kitchen, reflecting the different social statuses of the master, family members, and servants. Etiquette required a long spatial sequence from the main entrance to the reception rooms, carefully designed and staging the best views to the garden. In post-war apartment houses the traditional design of the genkan was simplified to make it a compact space containing various functions such as storage, washing, receiving goods, or making phone calls. In essence it is designed as a public space inside an apartment. However, in contemporary high-rise residential buildings the boundary between the private interior and the public exterior has been overly stretched by the introduction of common entrance lobbies where guests can be welcomed on the ground floor. Moreover, a series of technical devices, such as cameras, sensors, automatic doors, elevators, and intercoms, have been introduced for security, accessibility, and comfort, again physically lengthening the distance to the private door to an even greater extent.
The research follows the transformation of the Japanese bath over the last 150 years from a set of portable objects – each designed for its respective distinct purpose yet not bound to a particular space – to a bathroom integrating the different elements into a whole unit, including the surfaces of the ceiling, the walls and the floors, as well as the hidden installations for water supply, water heating, sewage disposal, driers, lighting, and so on. Originating as a service reserved to a privileged few – where the water was brought from the well by a servant, while another servant was responsible for heating it, preparing the bath and maintaining the right temperature – more so than with other devices and spaces in Japan, the history of the private bath is closely linked to social emancipation. In the post-war years the equipment of apartments with baths, facilitated by compact and safe gas-water-heaters, became a symbol of improvements in quality of life under the welfare state, while in more recent years the fully-equipped bath has more and more become a highly technological space of contemporary comfort and body-care, its surfaces imitating wood and tiles and thus, via associations, continuing to establish relationship to its origins, albeit an indefinite one.
The bike has permeated the city. No longer just a simple transportation device, the bike has encroached upon and infiltrated many aspects of city life. We view the bike through a whole new lens: fashionable object, accessory, lifestyle tool. How can we engage this new bilking conception in a meaningful way? Commercycle Tokyo attempts to fuse once disparate fields: cycling should merge with a more rounded lifestyle approach, to form a new architecture for bicycle. Bikes should no longer be relegated to lanes and roads. Bikes architecture will engage the bicycle with the city.
