Housing in Response to the Human Life Cycle by Shirley Tomita

A close potter friend of mine and I traveled one summer to Hagi in Japan, a city renown for its pottery. It is a ware so revered and famous, that we took this trip specifically to immerse ourselves in its qualities and art. When we arrived, I was very disappointed at my response to the wares. They left me so unimpressed that I knew I must be missing the obvious and key essence of its qualities.

Bound and determined to find the spirit of Hagi, I rented a bike and went to almost every one of the hundreds of pottery shops in the city. Exhausted and frustrated at the end of the day, I found myself sharing my story of my failed quest with a shopkeeper. From the kindness of his heart, he offered to serve me a cup of tea for my endeavors. Minutes later he appeared with a most incredible cup, so rich in color and texture, stained and crackled with tannic and explosions of pink oxidation. I was simply stunned. I had never seen a cup so beautiful.

“This is Hagi as it has become after 50 years of tea, served and shared with deepest humility and hospitality,“ he explained. “The wares in the stores are Hagi as it is new and incomplete, ready for you to finish and to tell your story.”

This was such a profound epiphany that it became my dream to strive for someday to create places and spaces which reflect the essence and the spirit of Hagi.

I find today, in the work I care about and share with like minds, the seed of Hagi continuing to inspire me. The essence of “Housing in Response to the Human Life Cycle” rests in the fundamental premise of a responsive, flexible, supportive and transformative environment. The average household composition is becoming increasingly varied as our society becomes more diverse. The rapidly aging population and longer life expectancies are leading to a greater number of people with physical as well as social dependencies. The traditional household makeup has expanded to include elderly relatives, caregivers, unrelated adults, and even businesses. Unfortunately, conventional housing stock is generally designed for the singular needs of a romanticized nuclear family with no disabilities, no transitions, nor the necessity of creative living solutions.

These trends demand a new approach to designing dynamic and transformative environments, which accommodate changing situations and varying abilities. The layout of a home should be designed with built-in flexibility and multi-tasking capabilities; it should anticipate a number of possible floor plan configurations that are available as the need arises. The benefits are a reduction in waste and remodeling costs, an increase in the marketability of a home, and a contribution to creating more stable and sustainable communities. It is possible for housing to transform and support many choices and needs, reduce the constant need to move, bring people together in symbiotic relationships, and enable elders to age-in-place with authentic contributing roles.

A house can be more than just shelter; its potential is to be our most valuable tool and asset, supporting us throughout our lifespan. It is container and record of how we have chosen to live and share our lives. This approach is fundamentally sustainable, intelligent, creative, compassionate, and truly universal.

I agreed to write this article because I wished to share with others the evolving concept which our design team finds so exciting. But I also wanted to thank Second Journey for the inspiration I felt at the July Visioning Council.

I'm sure the extraordinary beauty of the place and its buildings provided part of the magic. The Sanctuary, for example, where we met in circle one evening — with its extraordinary simplicity and emptiness, its “”gentle sufficiency” as one participant described it — reminded me that Home is always our first and surest sanctuary.

But more important than place was the company of fellow seekers. As we each tapped into the formative experiences that have shaped our sense of community, I realized mine had been decisively influenced by the protected world of my childhood. I'd lived these impressionable early years among five women who were brought together by need at the end of the Second World War.

Through the eyes of a child, it was all a very warm, supportive, and happy environment. Our home — a very small building which had earlier served as my grandfather's art studio —was a bustling, busy, dynamic community. Every day and throughout the day the house changed as the need required: sleeping rooms became dining rooms, then living rooms, and then back to sleeping rooms.

These memories and early experiences still shape how I interpret environment and why I hold so strongly to the idea that the quality of the whole depends on the quality of the part; community must first exist in the house before we can become a community of homes.

I will close with a short poem which came to me after the weekend at Whidbey and which is a tribute both to Hagi and to all our journeys:

Hagi

A ware so plain
Like canvas white
As if for paint
Of Time's delight