'Japaneseness' in the UK Built Environment: An Ethnographic Approach

Japanese culture and aesthetics are increasingly woven through our everyday lives in the UK, from Marie Kondo tidying on our TV screens to a kintsugi ('golden joinery') cup in a Glasgow coffee shop. But what does this mean for our built environment? In partnership with Takero Shimazaki Architects (t-sa), secondee Dr Jennifer Coates will explore how Japanese aesthetics, or aesthetics perceived to be 'Japanese,' are shaping the global environment, from the design of private homes in the UK to hotels, public businesses, and exhibitions on architectural practice around the world.
Through workplace ethnography at t-sa and interviews with t-sa clients, commissioning bodies, and related curatorial experts, Coates will investigate how ideas are developed within an architectural practice that is often commissioned to work on projects that are imagined as 'Japanese' in some particular aspect. Drawing from her previous research with popular culture audiences, Coates will also conduct surveys and participant observation with members of the general public, in order to understand how ideas about Japanese aesthetics are communicated through television, film, magazines, and Internet sites. These mixed methods will identify any gaps between the development of creative ideas within t-sa, and public understanding of certain t-sa aesthetics or architectural styles as 'Japanese.' Exploring such slippages and abstractions from the development of a project to its reception will shed light on how 'Japanese' aesthetics are imagined and understood outside Japan, giving rise to new ways of understanding the global influences, or perceptions of global influence, within our immediate environment.
Part of a larger project undertaken by the secondee (Coates) titled 'Japan' Outside Japan, this secondment will allow Coates to study this ongoing phenomenon from within a leading architectural practice which is regularly commissioned to work on projects perceived to have a 'Japanese' theme, and invited to represent the cutting edge of Japanese architectural principles at international exhibitions. Coates will investigate what is meant by invoking 'Japan' in client discussions and institutional invitations to exhibit or discuss Japanese-inspired architecture, using an ethnographic approach to understand how ideas of 'Japan' are used to communicate a broad range of architectural elements, themes, and moods. This will be the foundation for Chapter 5 of Coates' current book project, 'Japan' Outside Japan, which focuses on "'Japaneseness' in the Built Environment". Drawing from the secondment experience, Coates and t-sa will collaborate on a research paper that which will explore the tensions between associations of Japan and 'Japaneseness' with sustainability while actual Japan-influenced aesthetic elements (e.g. ferro-concrete construction, or preferences for new builds) are often not environmentally sound. In this respect, the paper will address the climate emergency as well as tensions between trends, profit, and sustainability in the architecture sector. Finally, during the secondment, Coates will also build a contact database of designers, landscape architects, and other creative practices in the UK that invoke principles of 'Japaneseness' in their works, for use in t-sa's client-facing work and to inform Coates' larger book project.
The resources requested will cover Coates' salary at 0.4 FTE for 12 months; 36 return train journeys from Sheffield to London to join staff meetings, observe client meetings, and interview past clients of t-sa; 12 visits to Japan-related creative practices and site visits in the UK to compile the contact datadatabase; and 1 visit to China to observe the Japan Foundation exhibition on Japanese architecture, in which t-sa features. T-sa will provide in kind support in the form of staff time, office space, and archive access, estimated at 25% of the total cost of the project.