Present-day public housing redevelopment attempts to take full advantage of the open spaces provided by former apartment complexes in its landscape design. There is an increasing need to consider apartment complex design from a rebuilding and repurposing perspective in architecture and urban planning: how do we make use of and build upon existing external and internal spaces?
Public housing development in post-war Japan sought to shift development away from city centres towards consolidated hillside areas. At the same time, due to remaining safety and economic concerns in building construction at the time, there was a need for urban planning that could overcome the limitations imposed by the natural environment. One example of a building design that arose from such circumstances is the compact, planar, Y-shaped “star house”. The star house was devised as a building type that could better accommodate topographically irregular land on which flat plate building construction was difficult. Star house apartment complexes were subsequently constructed across the country by government bodies such as the Japan Housing Corporation (JHC).
However, until now, there has been no research that has empirically clarified what characteristics a star house possesses, nor the characteristics of the locations where they have been constructed in the development of actual residential apartment complexes. We have, therefore, clarified the architectural characteristics of star houses in detail based on a case study. The subject of the case study is the Ozasa-danchi, an apartment complex in Fukuoka City developed by the Fukuoka Prefectural Housing Association (FPHA) in the latter half of the 1950s. The Ozasa-danchi was developed by arranging multiple star houses (Y-shaped and V-shaped houses) without significantly altering the highly uneven land. Using plan data we obtained by surveying these FPHA star houses, we performed comparative analyses of FHPA star houses with JHC star houses. From the results, it was determined that there are differences in the shapes of the two types, and that the FPHA star houses were designed in consideration of the FHPA’s financial state, and were adapted to suit the local hot and humid climate. The FHPA star houses also preserve the essential points of the design of a star house, such as its compact plane shape. The next report will consider the topographical characteristics of the locations where star houses have been constructed, based on the architectural characteristics of star houses revealed by this report.
