To describe five projects of Japanese houses,a good place to start is from the words of Norwegion Wood,the Beatles song that talks about open spaces and flexibility,in which the main functions of the house dissolve themselves in a light ambient,without con-straints,and display easily a first feature of Japanese residences:the design of spaces that adapt to differ-ent uses of the various inhabitants.
The words of Yasunari Kawabata in the novel The Old Capital introduce us,then,to a second characteristic,derived from the first: the design of residential spaces as places of public use,environments that seek to re-create in the home the typical qualities of urban spaces.The houses then become small towns,where public and private places are dissolved in a rich and complex continuity,embodying the description given by Atelier Bow Wow illustrating the Japanese "Fourth- Generation Houses".