Japan Architectural Review最新文献

Safe and efficient conservation of cultural artifacts requires preventing artifacts deterioration and energy-saving environmental control. To achieve this, predicting deterioration caused by environmental conditions is necessary. Predicting the mechanical damage caused by humidity fluctuations necessitates knowledge of the mechanical properties of cultural artifacts materials. Although the mechanical properties of several artifacts have been extensively studied, no investigations have focused on the soils underlying wall paintings. This study aims to clarify some mechanical properties of the upper- and middle-coat soils serving as the substrates for Hiten wall paintings at Horyu-ji Temple. Mock-up materials were prepared, and splitting tensile and uniaxial compressive tests were performed. Simultaneously, specimens with various equilibrium humidities were tested to clarify their humidity dependency. The tensile and compressive strengths, Young's modulus, proportional limit, and Poisson's ratio of the upper-coat soil were 0.103–0.239 MPa, 1.16–2.55 MPa, 0.115–0.209 GPa, and 1.10–2.49 MPa, and 0.152, respectively. Moreover, the humidity-induced strains for the upper- and middle-coat soils were measured, and the moisture expansion coefficients were approximately 1240 and 2337 μST/−, respectively. The results of this study provide vital data for the conservation of the wall paintings and contribute to a deeper understanding of wall soil properties.

The Incorporated Church Building Society, established in 1818, was initially unable to subsidize secular-use buildings from the general fund. However, in 1858, it established the mission building fund and began to construct hamlet chapels, school churches, mission halls, and mission rooms. In the early years, there were some examples of dual-purpose buildings without a strict distinction between sacred and secular spaces, but a type of building with a church on the upper floor and secular rooms on the lower floor emerged. However, the distinction between sacred and secular spaces was insufficient, and a stage for secular use had not yet emerged.

COVID-19 outbreaks occurred in several hospitals, and the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, local authorities, and universities carried out investigations into ventilation in hospitals. The results indicated that ventilation performance was insufficient to prevent aerosol infection due to poor air conditioning, equipment maintenance, and existing ventilation design guidelines. The authors investigated guidelines for ventilation measures for general patient wards with the cooperation of The Society of Air-Conditioning and Sanitary Engineers of Japan and the Japanese Society for Infection Prevention and Control. Based on a survey of COVID-19 outbreaks in hospitals, ventilation countermeasure plans for 3 stages (a. normal conditions, b. increased risk of outbreaks, and c. infected patients treated) were compiled.

This paper aimed to discuss the areal extent and spatial structure of neighborhood, called tol, which possibly demarcate urban tissue with respect to worship of the deity and funerary acts. Bhaktapur is known as one of the historical cities of the World Heritage Site in Kathmandu Valley. The analysis firstly focuses on the dwelling distributions that have the common votary area of the guardian deities' temples/shrines and the use of the same crossing for funerary acts. Then, the authors compare those dwelling distribution with the areal extent of tols to find out how tol boundaries were formed. This result will be a precondition to conduct further examination on historical urban formation in the coming paper.

Asuka village in Nara Prefecture has been designated as one of the “Special Conservation Areas for Historic Landscape” since the 1960s and is known for its richness in historic remains from the Asuka period. This paper aimed to clarify the exterior design composition of rural main houses in six village sections in Asuka village. Based on the data collected in these village sections, an item/category data are compiled. Using this IC data, by performing “multiple correspondence analysis” followed by cluster analysis, samples are classified into 15 clusters. The obtained clusters are further grouped into Townhouse type, Intermediate type between townhouses and farmhouses, Farmhouse type, Conventional construction type, Modern type, Yamato-mune (thatched roof) type, Single-storied traditional type, and Single-storied type. Given that our previous research paper revealed the variation and development process of house compounds, the analysis next explores the relationship between the building layouts in house compounds and the exterior designs of main houses. Finally, the paper tries to find out the characteristics of the dominant typologies of exterior design of main houses in each village section.

This study explores the cultural ecosystem services of sacred forests in urban areas, focusing on the Meiji-Jingu Shrine's forest in Japan. We assessed the forest's sublimity and landscape perceptions among Japanese and Chinese visitors using a mixed-method approach. Data were gathered from 359 geotagged photographs and a questionnaire completed by 30 participants, evaluating sublimity and psychological aspects. GIS analysis identified scenic hotspots, and statistical methods compared landscape perceptions between the two visitor groups. Text mining analyzed differences in their forest evaluation. Key findings include (1) Cultural differences in perceiving landscape hotspots, (2) insights into the sublime nature of Meiji-Jingu Shrine's forest, and (3) varied perceptions of forest sublimity between Japanese and Chinese visitors. This cross-cultural study provides valuable insights for sacred forest conservation.

Japan faces the serious challenge of a decreasing and aging population, impacting the maintenance and upgrade of public libraries. Concurrently, public libraries, crucial social education facilities in Japan, are expected to assume broader societal roles. In response, some Japanese public libraries relocated to address these challenges and new demands. However, there has been limited research focusing on the relocation process and its subsequent evaluation. This paper fills this gap by concentrating on relocated public libraries (RPLs) in Japan during the recent decade (2010–2020), aiming to investigate their relocation motivations and spatial improvement and evaluate their role fulfillment after relocation. By posting questionnaire sheets to 217 target RPLs, we collected 143 valid responses, did a cross-analysis on motivations, spatial changes, and library types, and evaluated improved role fulfillment postrelocation. Results suggest that public libraries are serving multiple roles in their communities, and their role fulfillment after relocation was linked to certain locational and spatial improvements. This research could help upgrade and reorganize public libraries in the future and contribute to the literature by understanding the relocation of public libraries from a dynamic perspective.

This study aims to reveal the difficulty of realizing large hyperbolic paraboloid (HP) shell structures comprising reinforced concrete in earthquake-prone Japan in the 1950s. The analysis focused on the design and construction of Sunpu Kaikan, focusing on the roles of Kenzo Tange and Yoshikatsu Tsuboi, alongside their architectural laboratory staff. It revealed how the experience gained in the Sunpu Kaikan project contributed to two architectural projects in the 1960s: the Niigata City Gymnasium, with its steel-frame concrete HP shell, and the Yoyogi National Stadium, with its suspension roof structure.

In aging and aged countries, one of the main issues is to establish sufficient nursing homes for seniors. Japan, as one of the most rapidly aged countries, has been reforming nursing homes for the elderly since the 1990s and established a long-term care insurance system. The purpose of this scoping review is to systematically map the evolution of researches for nursing homes in Japan since the 1990s, particularly with the post-occupancy evaluation of the introduction of private rooms and small units. Forty-three articles concerning privatization of rooms, shared spaces, and small unitization in nursing homes were extracted and analyzed. They were published between 1994 and 2021 in Journal of Architecture and Planning, AIJ Journal of Technology, JAABE, and JAR. The results revealed an evaluation of the privatized rooms mainly from the perspectives of residents' lives and care staffing, the effects and issues of the shared spaces introduced at the same time as private rooms, and the evaluation and issues on subsequent unit-type floor plans. This study offers significant implications to Asian countries that will have aging and aged populations in the near future by summarizing Japan's experience in dealing with realistic and practical problems over the past 20 years.

In recent years, there has been an increasing demand for small-scale hostels, such as vacation rentals, known as “minpaku” in Japanese, which were originally single-family houses. To convert these buildings for use as accommodation facilities, improvements must be made to fire evacuation safety measures. An effective and reasonable measure for this improvement is the installation of wireless, interconnected alarm smoke detectors. We conducted experiments to examine how sleeping guests recognize these alarms when they are activated. Eleven participants experienced the alarm sounding while sleeping at night and while awake during the daytime at a wooden cottage. They were exposed to three different sounding patterns. In the sleeping experiment, 9 of 11 participants were woken up by alarms sounding in other rooms, while the remaining two were woken up by alarms in their own rooms. However, those two participants had difficulty understanding the meaning of the voice alarm clearly. The voice stated, “Other detector was activated,” indicating a fire in another room and urging evacuation, even though there was no smoke in their room. Comprehension of the alarm system is essential for guests to understand its intentions accurately and make proper decisions regarding evacuation.