Hebel Haus™ features a service life of 60 years. No maintenance is necessary during the first 30 years, and then the roof’s waterproof layer needs to be replaced and the exterior walls need to be repainted. But a “Long Life Home” means more than just maintenance-free durability, it also means retaining comfort. How the house utilizes natural light, for example, plays an important role. Spaces that feel bright will feel comfortable. People tend to assume that means you need south-facing windows. In visual environment engineering, though, we know that brightness depends on how much sky you can see. If the sky can be seen from the north side of the house but not from the south side, having a large window facing north is far better than having windows facing south.

In addition to durability and comfort, a “Long Life Home” also needs disaster resilience. The great potential of Hebel Haus™ is its inherent durability and fire resistance. You can be sure of these two aspects no matter who designs the house. Unlike hiring a private architect to design a house from scratch, once a customer decides to build a Hebel Haus™ home, practically half of the design process is already complete. The remaining process is not to provide disaster-resistance, but proposing designs for comfort in the spaces where residents will spend time from day to day, and how to harmonize the exterior with the surrounding environment. To me, house design means selecting which elements to include and which to do without in order to blend well with the outside environment while creating comfortable living space.

There are two main aspects to designing a house. One is to fulfil universal needs for comfort such as how to incorporate light and heat, ventilation, thermal and sound insulation, and so on. The other aspect is the specific requests of the individual customer according to taste. The two need to be balanced. Depending on the size of the premises and the owner’s lifestyle, house designs become quite different. For example, if the space is limited, some things may have to be done differently in order to enable comfortable living. In contrast, some owners with a large plot might want to use one-third of it for a collection of cars.

In discussions with customers about ideas for their houses, I avoid using words about the appearance like “cool” or “stylish.” Instead, I prefer to say “pleasant” and “comfortable.” As a designer, I think it would be egotistical to advocate my own subjective idea of a “cool” or “stylish” appearance. When I recommend something “pleasant” or “comfortable” though, no customer disagrees. In fact, I believe “pleasant” contributes to the appearance.

Just looking at a house by itself is meaningless. A house should be seen together with its surroundings such as fences and greenery, as an integral part of its neighborhood. The truly “cool” appearance is one where this is pleasant as a whole.

My father was an architect, who ran his own small design office. Sometimes he brought work home, and I watched him drawing perspective by hand. It seemed like magic to me, as he used watercolors to make pictures that looked like photographs. I was good at drawing myself, and was handy with crafts, so it was natural for me to go into architecture as well.

When I was in college, I was unimpressed by the modular houses made by many housing manufacturers. They looked like giant decorated cakes to me. One day I saw a newspaper advertisement for Hebel Haus™ featuring a new style of architecture. It appealed to me somehow, and I was also fascinated by Asahi Kasei’s origin as a chemical company, not a construction company. Today, Asahi Kasei also makes various construction materials such as Neoma Foam™ high-performance insulation panels, and innovative pile foundation systems. Other housing manufacturers don’t make these things themselves. I joined the company because I sensed great potential from such diverse capabilities, and I still sense that today.

I am often asked how housing will change in 10 to 20 years. I don’t think there can be any fundamental change as long as it’s a place for humans to live. Although connections to a convenient world are becoming more virtual, the basic aspects of safety and comfort will continue to evolve along a familiar path, as they are universal prerequisites for a home. I think when designing a home, though, we increasingly need to consider how the neighborhood as a whole can respond when a disaster occurs. Several disasters since the Great Hanshin Earthquake have made this a more pressing requirement.

I mainly work at the Tokyo Design Office (TDO), where we have a team of designers who fine-tune home designs to precisely match each location and each customer’s needs. In a way, this may seem to be at odds with the original purpose of industrially manufactured housing to provide a large volume of high-performance homes at low cost. In addition to the engineering aspect of architecture, designing a home is like writing a story. When I set up TDO, I dusted off books on the history and meaning of architecture from my student days and read them again. It was enlightening to go back to the basics again after accumulating some experience. Suddenly it all made sense, and I was able to understand more fully. I think it helped to broaden the scope of my design work.