A living room with paintings絵の置かれたリビング

We set up a shared atelier in Hatoyama New Town on the suburbs of Tokyo. This was a city and lifestyle artificially constructed during the period of rapid economic growth. Fifty years after these plots were sold, residents’ lifestyles have started to shift from the picture of the nuclear family to more hobby-based, individual lifestyles.

The artist I work with, Hanaoka, uses the context and classical techniques of Japanese painting to capture today’s changing way of life. The house that we turned into a shared atelier was built in a period of urbanization to fit the lifestyle of a family who went to work in the city centre. Roughly 50 years after it was built, the long, narrow living room extension reveals traces of the lives of different generations. We have transformed this family living room. We have turned a private family space into a public space where strangers can live (work) together.

By changing the way we interpret the living space, we are trying to discover the shoots of new ways of living from within. Residential suburbs are currently faced with a range of problems including an aging population and an increase in vacant properties. When considering sustainability, we must constantly redefine our ever-changing way of life. Now, as our lives go through a period of transition, we are attempting to capture our way of life from an artistic standpoint, and to gradually redefine it from an architectural standpoint. Our movement is an extract from that continuum.