Rather than annex the private quarters
from the public areas, bedrooms are
placed at the centre of the unit.
EMPLOYEES AT THE SHANGHAI office of Japanese life-
style and homeware brand Muji often have to endure
a six-hour round trip from their home to work. House
prices and availability in the city’s centre mandate that
most live in the suburbs and travel in by subway. For
this year’s China House Vision exhibition – a spinoff
of the housing expo inaugurated by the company’s art
director Kenya Hara – Muji tasked Japanese architect
Gō Hasegawa with coming up with a solution. His
answer? A brand-owned co-living model that raises
questions not only of how we programme such spaces,
but also whether we may see a return of the sort of
paternalistic company housing projects that had their
heyday in the 19th century.
Hasegawa’s design is directly influenced by
Shanghai’s existing residential architecture. The upper
floors of many blocks often have a ceiling height of 4 m- too low to create an intermediate story, but, given
the pressure on housing stock, also an inefficient use of
space. It also references the wider historical context of
Chinese housing design, which features many shared-
living typologies, from Yaodong cave residences to the
much-romanticized Siheyuan courtyard dwellings.
The solution suggested here is an evolved system
of enclosed mezzanines – the architect likens them to
the ‘canopy beds’ that were once common across the
country. These floating platforms provide space for
personal time, concentrated work and sleep. Rather than
situating them side-by-side and designating a distinct
part of the property as ‘private’, however, the cruciform
structure distributes them evenly throughout the unit.
Below is a communal space with facilities for washing,
eating and relaxation, all outfitted in Muji’s trademark
upbeat minimalism, of course.
Both symbolically and functionally, this tree-like
armature reinforces the imperative to actually be com-
munal when living in shared housing. This is not as self-
evident in the design of many of the co-living projects
that have emerged over the last half-decade as you might
imagine, with most offering what amounts to a hotel-
like experience – residents share facilities rather than
each other’s company. Situating these private enclaves
in the centre and not on the periphery of the unit, with
inhabitants emerging directly into the ‘common’ – and
only – room, enforces the sort of social structures
needed to make such arrangements truly viable. As such,
the project is more akin to the sort of ‘social condensers’
trialled (albeit unsuccessfully) by Russian constructivists
in the 1920s than contemporary co-living developments
like The Collective in London or WeLive in New York. »FRAME LAB 157