Architectural Theory Review

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Timber Behaviorology

Cathelijne Nuijsink & Momoyo Kaijima

To cite this article: Cathelijne Nuijsink & Momoyo Kaijima (2021): Timber Behaviorology,
Architectural Theory Review, DOI: 10.1080/13264826.2021.1971832

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2021.1971832

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ARCHITECTURAL THEORY REVIEW
https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2021.1971832

Timber Behaviorology
Cathelijne Nuijsinka and Momoyo Kaijimab
a
ETH Zurich; bAtelier Bow-Wow

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
The work of Atelier Bow-Wow has, over the last 29 years, turned Architectural behaviorology;
to exploring what they call behaviorology: the full social and cul- timber behaviorology;
tural effects of constructing architecture. Through collaborations Atelier Bow-Wow; Japan;
local timber networks
with local craftsmen, wood specialists, timber management com-
panies, house construction companies as well as architectural
design studios in Japan and Switzerland they unlock the poten-
tials of local timber networks. This interview with Momoyo
Kaijima, founding partner of Atelier Bow-Wow, examines this
aspect of their work, and places “timber behavoriology” in the
context of an expanded scale of design: from forestry, to com-
munities, to codes, to cultural history, to seismic details, and,
somewhere in between, architecture.

Tokyo-based architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow, run by Momoyo Kaijima, Yoshiharu

Tsukamoto, and Yoichi Tamai, have over a number of decades developed a perspective
that architecture should be viewed as an animate hub within an entire ecosystem.
Architectural behaviorology, as they dubbed the method, investigates architecture as part
of an all-encompassing network of urban activities. In this network, objects, people, neigh-
boring houses, weather conditions and site actively influence design. More recently, they
have developed a variation they call timber behaviorology, in which they study timber
architecture through the relationships between building material, wood construction tech-
niques and (local) craftspeople. In this interview, we explore the potential of timber behav-
iorology to act as an alternative practice, allowing us also to reframe how we see timber
histories. It discusses the work of Atelier Bow-Wow as it is conducted with students of
Kaijima-lab at the University of Tsukuba and Kaijima’s Chair of Architectural
Behaviorology at ETH Z€ urich, against a background of historical and contemporary devel-
opments with respect to timber architecture in order to contextualize the work of Atelier
Bow-Wow in Japan’s long history of wood production and timber architecture. Equally, it
reviews the work, writings and research projects of Atelier Bow-Wow on the topic of
wood to reveal a history of timber architecture that makes the flux of wood and its con-
nection to the local production systems its main preoccupation.

CONTACT Cathelijne Nuijsink cathelijne.nuijsink@gta.arch.ethz.ch

ß 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in
any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
2 NUIJSINK & KAIJIMA

Cathelijne Nuijsink (CN): For centuries in Japan, it has been the master builder
(daiku) who built traditional houses entirely from wood, using skills passed on
from generation to generation. The profession of master carpenter stemmed from
the early woodworker, who became a wood-building artisan in the sixteenth cen-
tury, not only designing and crafting building components, but also overseeing the
construction site.
Momoyo Kaijima (MK): Indeed, for a very long time we did not need academy-trained
architects for designing wooden houses because carpenters did it. When the profession
of architecture was introduced in Japan in the late nineteenth century, architects were
enlisted to design new institutional buildings with “modern” materials, because the large
scale of new buildings was something wood could not cover. Therefore, concrete, steel
and brick were at the center of an architect’s new education in the early twentieth cen-
tury. And, after World War Two, new building regulations were introduced that pre-
scribed that newly built buildings had to be designed and documented by architects.1
From then on, an architect was legally required to sign the drawings and submit the
designs for a design review. This requirement pushed people into inviting academically
trained architects, often educated abroad, to design their houses, instead of approaching
a carpenter. Given the limited materials available immediately after the Second World
War, this presented a good opportunity for architects to design wooden single-family
houses. The Minimal House Competitions were one example of ways in which new
ideas in wood building were promoted.2 Jun Masuda and Junzo Sakakura were two
architects participating in these competitions and their works were important footprints
for this history. In the 1950s and 1960s, architects readily experimented with the
wooden house type in suburban houses in and around Tokyo.3 The House of Prof. Saito
(1952), designed by Kiyoshi Seike, and Kazuo Shinohara’s very first house designs in
wood, such as House in Kugayama (1954), Umbrella House (1961), and House in White
(1966) (in his so-called “First-Style”), were all developed against this background.

CN: So, with the professionalization of architecture came institutional buildings

that were supposed to be more “modern,” and wood came to be considered an
“unprofessional” material. What role did local carpenters start to play from the
moment that architects began to focus on the design of single-family houses?
MK: Of course, carpenters also started to react to this new regulation, obtaining an
architect’s license and starting their own businesses.4 We still see that influence today.
Most of the wooden single-family houses in Japan are made by construction companies
run by carpenters, registered as First-Class Registered Kenchikushi, Second-Class
Registered Kenchikushi or Registered Kenchikushi for Wooden Buildings, rather than
by individual architects. Recently, there is another noteworthy development. Carpenters
traditionally skilled in wood started working as carpenters for concrete cast panels,
which expanded their skills and knowledge toward large-scale, institutional buildings.

CN: To what extent did these new postwar laws change the design of the traditional
Japanese house?
MK: Originally, Japanese wood structures were not subject to codes regulating static
suitability. Carpenters used wood details with wood joints with a minimum of metal
 ARCHITECTURAL THEORY REVIEW 3

nails.5 With the introduction of the new postwar regulations, however, wood structures
came under the scrutiny of the earthquake engineering codes.

CN: Did the new regulations ignore centuries-old expertise in wood construction?
MK: Well, it was more that existing traditional Japanese buildings, such as temples,
shrines and old wooden houses, were unable to adhere to these new regulations. When
these structures are being significantly renovated, or entirely reconstructed, they have
to follow the new static requirements, though. An interesting development in this field
is being promoted by Professor Yoshichika Uchida and his Building Construction
Laboratory at the University of Tokyo. For the past thirty or forty years they have been
analyzing traditional construction skills for contemporary use. Uchida has been able to
demonstrate in his design practice how the traditional Japanese wood joint is actually
very effective against earthquakes. Under his supervision, many scholars have tried to
analyze how the traditional Japanese wood joint can be updated within the new
regulations.

CN: What role does American timber play in this response to the new earthquake
engineering codes?
MK: When the Japanese economy grew rapidly in the 1960s, there was a housing
boom, and the demand for wood as a construction material grew, escalating the price
of local Japanese lumber. In response, Japan, in the 1960s opened the market to
cheaper imports. This resulted in a large influx of foreign lumber, undercutting the
domestic logging industry.6 The American pressure to export wood to Japan has been
very strong. When Japan lost the war, Allied Forces occupied Japan until 1952, and the
Okinawa islands until 1972. During the Occupation, many new systems and laws were
imposed upon us. The traditional systems of landownership (iriaichi), including the
forest ownership system, were destroyed by the privatization of forests and forest union
organizations from the Meiji Period (1868–1912) to the early Showa Period (1926–89).
Originally, we used to have mountain “commons,” large mountains shared by multiple
communities. To register taxes, though, the Allied Forces privatized land ownership.
Farmland was fragmented into small pieces. Because commons are now privatized, it
has become difficult to manage our forests. This pressure to import American timber
has also introduced an engineering issue. American timber is what we call “dry
beam”—it has a humidity level under 20% and is kiln-dried before being sent to Japan.
Traditionally, we do have natural wood-drying techniques in Japan, but they need
space and time, as it is difficult to keep humidity levels under 20% in the humid
Japanese climate. This makes it hard for an engineer to reach the standard set by
Japanese engineering codes with Japanese timber.7

CN: What made you and the firm Atelier Bow-Wow focus on wood as a
research topic?
MK: For the last decade or so, the Japanese Government has been promoting Japanese
cedar as a resource for building houses. This also has to do with the timing of the culti-
vation of our forests. Most of the Japanese cedar trees were planted in the 1960s, and
after forty or fifty years they are ready to fell. When we started our firm in the 1990s, it
was a good moment to start to think about using the trees planted in the 1960s for
4 NUIJSINK & KAIJIMA

Figure 1. The realization of Atelier Bow Wow’s winning scheme in the Kumamoto Art Polis
Competition, Kiosk in Ruralscape (1992) in Oguni, Kumamoto Prefecture marks the architects’ first
collaboration with a local forestry union. Courtesy Atelier Bow-Wow.

making buildings. During the past twenty years, we designed several wooden houses.
Our early projects were very low-budget houses, so we used American pine (bematsu)
for the main structure, since it is a stable yet relatively inexpensive, and simply because
there were no alternatives.8 Already in our early career, we had started to shift focus
and work more in the form of collaborations. Our earliest collaborative project was a
winning competition scheme in Kumamoto prefecture, in which we designed a very
small kiosk for selling locally grown vegetables (Kiosk in Ruralscape, 1992) (fig. 1). It
 ARCHITECTURAL THEORY REVIEW 5

was our first collaboration, with a local Forestry Union in Oguni Town, Kumamoto.
From there, we imagined that a local forestry union might be interesting to work with.
Afterwards, we built the Kamanishi Camping Cottage in Niigata Prefecture, for which
we started working with a local carpenter. Because of these collaborations, we also
began to use local cedar wood. Lots of our projects are in the Tokyo area, where the
situation is different, but the opportunities to design projects in rural areas have taught
us about local carpenters’ ways of working, and about local resources.

CN: The 2017 Annual Report on Forest and Forestry in Japan from the
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries reports that “the Japanese gov-
ernment has been promoting those housing projects in which forest owners,
log producers, lumber producers, and local home builders cooperate, as well as
promoting the human resource development of architects with necessary know-
ledge and skills in wood use.” Did you participate in any of the subsi-
dized packages?
MK: There is one interesting timber management company in Japan, Tobimushi, that
has played a pivotal role in creating local timber networks. The company recognizes
that Japan’s forestry industry has declined, and the number of poorly maintained for-
ests has increased. To solve this problem, they are trying to reconnect people with the
forest. Tobimushi is good at negotiating with local municipalities to implement this
new approach to turn local timber networks into a new business model integrating
design to create new markets. Japan’s countryside has a lot of problems today, includ-
ing an aging society and depopulation. With the introduction of their timber network,
the firm helps to create new jobs there. Tobimushi invited us to work on several local
wood projects, including a town management project. Both Tsukumoto and I also have
university teaching positions (at Tokyo Tech and University of Tsukuba, respectively)
and many students in our laboratories research timber construction for their bachelor’s
and master’s thesis. A firm like Tobimushi provides us with a real case study from
which students can learn and collect data. This kind of collaboration between univer-
sity laboratories, the architectural office, management offices and local municipalities
works rather well.

CN: Around 2005, you started researching forestry at the University of Tsukuba
and started collaborating with local carpenters to propose a local house type. You
worked with Professor Kunihiro Ando, a specialist in traditional wood structures
and techniques.
MK: Yes, Ando is a specialist in traditional wood structures and is working to innovate
the Japanese wood system itakura so that it can be approved under the new Japanese
codes. Itakura is a Japanese timber construction method based on slitted timber col-
umns where a wood board is placed in the slit without requiring glue or nails.
Traditionally, this timber technique was used for storage houses in which crops and
rice for the following year’s agriculture seeds were stored, but also for shrines and tem-
ple buildings. Ando has demonstrated that the itakura system performs well structur-
ally so that codes have now been updated, setting the precedence for other types of
architecture. Ando introduced me to different kinds of wood, which was then helpful
6 NUIJSINK & KAIJIMA

Figure 2. Tama Loggia (Tokyo, 2013) is one of the house prototypes Atelier Bow-Wow developed
for the house construction company Tama Home. While utilizing Tama Home’s own characteristic
wooden construction method, Atelier Bow-Wow improved the standard living experience by adding
the semi-outdoor space of a loggia. Courtesy Atelier Bow-Wow.

for making new community connections. With my students at Tsukuba, we tackled

about twenty different research projects on the topic of local carpentry and local
resources. The supervision of these theses helped me a lot to understand what kind of
material and labor resources are available.

CN: You also collaborated with the firm Tama Home. What is the story behind this
collaboration?
MK: Tama Home is a house construction company originally from Fukuoka prefecture
that utilizes wood from their own forest to create the main structures of their house
system. The rest of their house parts are made by other partners. We were asked to
utilize their existing wooden construction method while promoting a better house
design. This collaboration resulted in the projects Machiya (2013) (fig. 2), Loggia
(2013), and Patio (2014). Our second kind of collaboration with Tama Home, Nippon
no Mori to Ki no Ie, is a spin-off product with the itakura system assembled from
Japanese materials including Japanese timber. In this project, they asked us to develop
an entirely new product system and brand it as a new “Japanese House.” Nippon no
Mori to Ki no Ie resulted in two new prototypes of which Kuranine, or “Storehouse
with 9 Grids,” is one. Kuranine (fig. 3) is a more expensive product line than the regu-
lar Tama Home because we used better quality wood and sustainable local materials.
 ARCHITECTURAL THEORY REVIEW 7

Figure 3. Kuranine, or Storehouse with 9 Grids, is a more expensive house prototype in the collec-
tion of house construction company Tama Home developed by Atelier Bow-Wow. Here, the archi-
tects could experiment with better quality, locally sustained wood and develop their own
construction method based on the itakura construction method. Nippon no Mori to Ki no Ie,
Kuranine, Kamakura, 2016. Courtesy Atelier Bow-Wow.

CN: As someone who is working on wood, do you regard small-scale and local silvi-
culture as a way to repair Japan’s mid-century deforestation?
MK: Yes, for sure. If local timber is available, why not use it? We proposed Core House
(2012, fig. 4), a house made of local wood in collaboration with Nakagawa Sugi
Kyohan Kumiai/Nakagawa Cedar Co & Co-Sale Cooperative Union, but wood resour-
ces were very limited in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, and
unfortunately the Core House building system could not be developed on a large scale.
However, at the time of developing Core House, we also began working for Koisuru
Buta Laboratory on the 1 K project in Chiba Prefecture, a wood workshop with welfare
services for all, including the disabled. Through our collaboration with Koisuru Buta
Laboratory, we learnt a lot about local forestry and timber networks, which made us
decide to work with a sawmill. In Core House, because of a timber shortage in Tohoku,
we collaborated with the Nakagawa Sugi Ky ohan Kumiai, which has worked for a long
time with Professor Ando in developing the itakura system. We believe that initiatives
focusing on the use of local wood are very helpful in the recovery from future disasters
as they encourage the local industry.
8 NUIJSINK & KAIJIMA

Figure 4. Core House in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture (2012) is one of Atelier Bow-Wow’s
responses to the recovery of the Tohoku area after it was largely destroyed by the 2011 Great East
Japan Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear powerplant breakdown. Part of the Archi-Aid Oshika
Peninsula Recovery Support Study, Core House was developed in collaboration with a cooperative
union specialized in local wood. Courtesy Atelier Bow-Wow.

CN: At ETH Zurich, you are promoting the idea of “timber behaviorology,” the
study of timber architecture as a relationship between building material, wood con-
struction techniques, and local craftspeople. In what way does timber behaviorology
imply the analysis of timber construction as a dynamic system, introducing a new
approach to design?
MK: Architectural behaviorology is our design theory and methodology, the objective of
which is to rediscover the forgotten values of resources through the lens of ethnography. It
tries to find barriers and challenges them in order to better access local resources, and to
activate the behaviors of actors, human and otherwise. Architectural behaviorology intro-
duces a better understanding of architectural form in its relationship with various behav-
iors, such as those of nature, humans and buildings. Switzerland is a cold country and has
a lot of hard wood as a material resource. Because of the climate and the abundance of
hard wood, people minimized their house—with small living area and low ceilings—result-
ing in the log house. Yet gradually, Switzerland entered the modern age and started to use
the post and beam system with softer hardwoods. Buildings transformed because they were
being used in different ways and were made with larger openings. Switzerland has an abun-
dance of birch wood, commonly only used for interiors, but nowadays, many architects try
to use birch also for the exterior; it is equally good for making new kinds of joints by using
the seam-and-saw method. A new material and a new technology thus allow new outputs.
 ARCHITECTURAL THEORY REVIEW 9

Figure 5. The ETH Design Studio “Timber Behavoriology in Japan” (Fall 2018) aimed to cultivate
local resources such as nature, human skills, and their knowledge to rediscover their forgotten
potential through the lens of ethnographical network. Students were asked to activate these sour-
ces by proposing an architectural design. The image shows a model of Tobias Wick’s Ayu Fishing
House. Courtesy Atelier Bow-Wow.

CN: What did the ETH design studio “Timber Behavoriology” reveal?
MK: We compared Japan and Switzerland and discovered a different genealogy of
both timber industries and their transformation—because of new technologies, but
also because of agriculture or tourism (figs 5 and 6). Both countries, during their
industrialization, moved from water mills to the electricity turbine, which signifi-
cantly increased timber production in both countries. However, it required differ-
ent skills.

CN: What skills did it require in Switzerland?

MK: In Switzerland, production and labor costs are in conflict. A good life requires a
high salary for all. On one hand, this is good, but on the other it is very difficult to
keep production within Switzerland. Products made in Switzerland are expensive, since
10 NUIJSINK & KAIJIMA

Figure 6. In the ETH Design Studio “Timber Behavoriology in Switzerland” (Spring 2019) students
examined the existing actor-network of timber construction to better understand the relationships
between buildings and society. Next, they visualized these relations by means of an ethnographical
approach. Shown here is an actor-network drawing in the Glarus Canton of Switzerland by
Alejandro Perez Giner. Courtesy Alejandro Perez Giner.

they need to cover the high costs of labor. Take the typical textile Swiss industry. The
canton of Glarus was famous in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for its textile
industry, but high labor costs created problems for the production of textiles. Either
production needed to move to low-cost labor settings in China or India or Switzerland
had to find a specific global market for Swiss-made products based on special crafts-
men skills and techniques. There are similarities with the Swiss watch-making industry.
However, the building industry is different because its end product is of a completely
different scale. Some parts of a window or furniture can be distributed, but others can-
not. This limitation is a good starting point for thinking about future strategies. Some
of the production in Switzerland has started to use computer technology in managing
building processes to save costs in the production line, or they have started to combine
hand-made with machine-made production to reduce material waste. This kind of
adjustment will push for alternative production, one that includes hands-on
approaches, public involvement and social education programs.

CN: In comparison, what skills does timber production in Japan require?

MK: Labor costs for building construction are lower in Japan than in Switzerland.
Since the climate in Japan is milder, construction also requires less budget for building
 ARCHITECTURAL THEORY REVIEW 11

materials; and although the number of carpenters in Japan is decreasing, we still have
many carpenters.9 It is said that new technologies have compensated for the lack of
hands but simultaneously resulted in a low motivation for timber production. How do
we preserve the knowledge and skills of forestry and carpentry under such circumstan-
ces? Another important point is the scale of industries. Timber production is related to
the scale of the building as well as the scale of the market. At the time of manual wood
production, manufacturers did not need a large market, but when they started to use
large machines, the machine power and initial costs had to be supported by a certain
market size. We need to think about how to preserve our environment and find a bal-
ance on a cultural, social and ecological level. I believe that architectural design can
play an important role in this.

CN: How did Switzerland sustain the industrial scale?

MK: The population of Switzerland increased in the last 25 years, from 6.9 million in
1995 to 8.7 million in 2021. Because of this growing population, the landscape and
urbanscapes of Switzerland have changed a lot in both density and materialization. The
number of industrial buildings has increased in both urban and rural contexts. In add-
ition, Switzerland is receiving more and more tourists from all over the world. This has
fed demand for more infrastructure and new chalets, a phenomenon that may result in
new suburbs around tourist areas. In the spring semester of 2021, we dedicated our
ETH Zurich design studio to the topic of “Tourism Behaviorology in Switzerland” (fig.
7), focusing on Interlaken and Grindelwald in the canton of Bern. This beautiful Alpine
area was discovered by English tourists in the nineteenth century, and the area has
largely developed in favor of tourists ever since. This suburbanization of rural life causes
problems in sustaining the quality of local life and the area as a commons. However,
Switzerland has a unique policy run by small local municipalities with which they can
create a kind of protection against economic pressures and maintain a local quality.

CN: In comparison, how did Japan sustain the industrial scale?

MK: Contrary to Switzerland, Japan is experiencing an aging society and population
decline, with a predominantly elderly population left behind in rural areas. Since the
elderly are not so interested in high economic demands from the market, interventions
in rural areas can be made on a relatively small budget. In particular, hands-on activ-
ities and public involvement are a great way to create a new actor network based on
social solidarity and urban–rural exchange. After the Great East Japan Earthquake,
there were many new initiatives where locals started to collaborate with architects.
Together with my partner Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, I also started working on a new com-
munal ecology called Chiisana Chikyu (Small Earth Project), which involved a renova-
tion project for a terraced rice fields area in Kamanuma in the Chiba Prefecture.10 We
tried to re-understand the revitalization of the landscape and an old farmhouse as an
actor network of local skills, knowledge, and resources, and saw within this revitaliza-
tion the potential for a new form of tourism. Tourism often results in an unbalanced
situation in rural areas. As an alternative, we proposed to activate local timber indus-
tries as part of the revitalization of the landscape and farmhouse. Take Japanese bam-
boo as another example. Bamboo has been an important material for agriculture, both
12 NUIJSINK & KAIJIMA

Figure 7. During the Spring 2021 semester, the Chair of Architectural Behaviorology (Prof.
Momoyo Kaijima) taught the ETH Design Studio “Tourism Behaviorology in Switzerland” in which
students engaged with the question of tourism architecture in Interlaken and Grindelwald.
Students critically examined the existing Swiss context by researching its history, analyzing its
actor-network, and proposing an argument of how the two towns could be developed in the
future. Image is showing part of Leandro Nahuel Barroso’s studio project “The City and The Ships.”
Courtesy Leandro Nahuel Barroso.
 ARCHITECTURAL THEORY REVIEW 13

Figure 8. The making of the forest accommodation Momonoura Village (2017) involved students of
Kaijima Lab and Sato Lab from the University of Tsukuba as well as locals and volunteers, collab-
oratively felling trees to produce wood for construction. Courtesy Atelier Bow-Wow.

as building material and for daily use, but in the last sixty years, bamboo has been sig-
nificantly replaced by plastic. Because people no longer use bamboo, bamboo forests
are abandoned, poorly maintained, and have even become a danger for deforesting nat-
ural forests. In response, we started to cut bamboo and use it for invigorating trad-
itional craft-techniques, such as cores of soil walls and for bamboo baskets.

CN: What did you learn from the focus on tourism in the ETH design studio?
MK: We understood that we can view tourism also as a “learning place.” In the recov-
ery from the tsunami damage after the Great East Japan Earthquake, we started a
fisherman’s school in Ishinomaki, where local communities could learn skills and
knowledge from fishermen. Initially, we were interested in inviting fishermen from
elsewhere who were typically not allowed to fish in this area, but the school turned
out to be a hub where fishermen from within and outside the area, as well as the local
community, started to exchange ideas and create different programs for understand-
ing the fishing village. This way of schooling extended naturally to the topic of the
“forest” that was located directly behind the beach. In the old days, forests adjacent to
the beach were covered with natural broadleaf trees, such as oaks, and later cultivated
as vegetable fields for the village’s own consumption. In the 1960s, these broadleaf
forests transformed into cedar forests through manual plantation by fishermen, a
program subsidized by the governmental policy that we talked about earlier. We
believe that fishermen can also learn from the forest, so we invited a forester from
another fishing village to come, fell, and thin the cedar and to make furniture out of it.
14 NUIJSINK & KAIJIMA

After we started the fisherman’s school, we founded the accommodation place

Momonoura Village (fig. 8) in the nearby forest.11 The building process of Momonoura
Village involved locals as well as volunteers from outside, and together we felled trees and
thinned the forest to produce building materials, and designed the building. It took quite
some time to build, but this time was used to build up good teamwork and local involve-
ment. Because of COVID-19, we unfortunately could not visit Momonoura Village as fre-
quently as before, but we do still keep in touch with the local community.

CN: Why do you see it as important for architects, or yourselves in particular, to

undertake this project to preserve the forest production and carpenter’s skills? Why
do these need to be preserved?
MK: It is our motivation to design. Tsukomoto and I are both running laboratories at
university. These academic positions should be used to lead society to improve conditions.
If we take a strong position toward locality, many young architects and students will also
start to think about what they need to do for the future. In our Japanese projects, some
students were influenced by the experience of working on the reconstruction in the vil-
lages of Ishinomaki or Kamanuma and it opened up more diverse options for their
careers. This is the role of education. We cannot give them everything in a semester-long
design project or a thesis project, but we want at least to offer them the opportunity to
think about the issue of locality. We noticed that students very interested in the Actor
Network Theory (ANT) promoted in the Timber Behaviorology studio often continue to
use it for their own research or diploma projects, and we already see students influenced
by ANT when joining the design studios of other professors. The timber behaviorology
method widens students’ interests, beyond mere form-making, andplaces as much
emphasis on the connections we make with people as on our materials.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors
Cathelijne Nuijsink is a Lecturer and Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for the History
and Theory of Architecture (gta) at ETH Zurich. She obtained master’s degrees in
Architecture from TU Delft and the University of Tokyo and a PhD in East Asian Languages
and Civilizations from the University of Pennsylvania. Her current research focuses on cross-
cultural, interdisciplinary knowledge exchange in architecture culture and aims to contribute
to a more dynamic and inclusive history of architecture since World War Two.
Momoyo Kaijima founded Atelier Bow-Wow with Yoshiharu Tsukamoto in 1992. She studied
at the Japan Women’s University, the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and ETH Zurich. She
has served at the Art and Design School of the University of Tsukuba since 2000, currently as
an associate professor (since 2009). Since 2017, she has been serving as a Professor of
Architectural Behaviorology at ETH Zurich. She curated the Japan Pavilion at the 2018 Venice
Architecture Biennale. Among the books produced by Atelier Bow-Wow are Atelier Bow-Wow:
A Primer (2013), Graphic Anatomy (2007), and Urban Forest (2016, with Kooperatives Labor
Studierender).
 ARCHITECTURAL THEORY REVIEW 15

ORCID
Cathelijne Nuijsink http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8900-6529

Notes
1. The two new regulations, both promulgated on May 24, 1950, were The Building
Standards Act (建築基準法) and The Architects and Building Engineers Act (建築士法).
The Building Standards Act, or Law No. 201, is a Japanese law that establishes minimum
standards for the site, facilities, structure, and use of buildings in order to protect the
lives, health, and property of the people. The Architects and Building Engineers Act, or
Law No. 202, is a Japanese law that stipulates the qualifications of engineers who design
and supervise the construction of buildings, with the aim of ensuring the appropriateness
of their work and thereby contributing to the improvement of the quality of buildings.
2. Starting with the 12 Tsubo House competition in 1947, the magazine Shinkenchiku
launched five residential design competitions between 1947 and 1949, advocating the
elimination of the “feudalistic” aspects of the traditional Japanese house. Addressing
themes such as “reduction of housework,” “child raising” and “rationalization of tidying
up,” the competitions were unique in that they required architects to analyze lifestyles
prior to design. Refer to Seizo Uchida, 「 戦 後 直 後 に 見 る 住 宅 コ ン ペ 」 ¼ “Sengo
chokugo ni miru j utaku kompe,” in 「現代建築の軌跡: 1925–1995「新建築」に見る建
築 と 日 本 の 近 代 .」 ¼ Gendai kenchiku no kiseki: 1925–1995 Shin kenchiku ni miru
kenchiku to nihon no kindai, ed. Jun Hashimoto (Tokyo: Shinkenchikusha, 1995), 159.
3. Makoto Masuzawa is a key example of an architect who successfully contributed to the
innovations in the modernization of the postwar house in Japan. In a reference to
Maison Citrohan (1922)—an economical housing prototype designed by master Le
Corbusier, in which he created a feeling of spaciousness using a double-height space—
Makoto Masuzawa developed the Minimum House (1952). Using a footprint of just 9
tsubo (29.75 square meters), the Minimum House is exemplary for a generation of
experimental houses in Japan that sought the absolute minimum shelter for the nuclear
family of the postwar era. Using wood as an alternative to industrial materials that had
become unavailable due to the interruption of supply chains after the war and the
traditional Japanese unit of measurement of a tsubo (roughly the size of two tatami mats
placed side by side), Masuzawa envisioned a whole new lifestyle based on the
introduction of a double-height living space. This was a spatial experience significantly
different from the horizontally-oriented Japanese wooden house. With the minimum
footprint, Masuzawa responded to a government program by the Japan Housing
Corporation (JHC) launched in 1950 to provide loans to people for building a house on
50 square meters or less. Since the Minimum House contained two floors (minus the
void), the total floor area remained under 50 square meters. See Cathelijne Nuijsink,
“What Is a House? Architects Redesigning the Domestic Sphere in Contemporary Japan,
1995–2011” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2017), 48–49.
4. Architects practicing in Japan are governed by the Kenchikushi Law. The term
“Kenchikushi” roughly translates to “licensed architects and/or building engineers.” Refer
to the report of the Japan Institute of Architects, “Kenchikushi Law in Japan,” http://
www.jia.or.jp/english/law_japan.htm?trk=profile_certification_title
5. For example, see Kiyoshi Seike, The Art of Japanese Joinery (New York: Weatherhill/
Tankosha, 1977).
6. Japanese timber imports significantly increased in the 1960s and with 47,238 000 cubic
meters overtook Japanese domestic wood production by the start of the 1970s. Japanese
timber import continued to grow thereafter while domestic production decreased. See
Thomas R. Cox, “The North American–Japan Timber Trade: The Roots of Canadian and
U.S. approaches,” Forest & Conservation History (A Special Issue on International Forest
16 NUIJSINK & KAIJIMA

History) 34, no. 3 (July 1990), 113. North America has been a steady supplier of wood to
Japan. See Forestry Agency Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Japan, “Wood
Supply and Demand Chart,” in Annual Report on Forest and Forestry in Japan 2019, 21.
https://www.maff.go.jp/e/data/publish/attach/pdf/index-182.pdf
7. American anthropologist Anna Tsing’s 2015 book The Mushroom at the End of the
World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (New York: Princeton University
Press, 2015) describes the relationship between Japan and American timber through the
Matsutake mushroom.
8. Beginning in the 1920s, the Pacific Northwest of the USA increasingly exported Douglas
fir, Port Orford cedar and western red cedar logs to Japan. See Laila Seewang’s essay in
this issue.
9. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forest and Fisheries reported that the number of
carpenters declined from 850,000 (1970) to 210,000 (2020). See also the 2013
governmental report on the promotion of Housing Market Development, http://www.
sarex.or.jp/meishoya/try/text_koyo.pdf. During the same period, the number of new
wooden houses declined from 1,100,000 (1970) to 540,000 (2018). Refer to the data
provided by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forest and Fisheries: https://www.rinya.maff.
go.jp/j/kikaku/hakusyo/r1hakusyo_h/all/index.html
10. Sustainable Creativity, https://uoc.world/bodaiju/projects/detail/?id=jsyrmho4i
11. See also, Kayako Ota, “Islands and Villages j Atelier Bow-Wow in Momonoura,”
CCAchannel, May 26, 2018, video, 14:11, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
rjBBLHtHaqs