Hiroba-ka open space as Japanese 'public' space within Tokyo's contemporary architecture

As a concept imported from the West during the Meiji period, the notion of ‘public space’ did not exist in Japan before. Besides, the cultural differences in understanding ‘space’ and ‘form’, resulted in the newly coined Japanese term ‘“public” space’ – ‘kōkyō kūkan’– and its spatial materiality with more complexity, ambiguity, and multiple meanings contained today, showing the uniqueness and geographical, historical, and socio-cultural differences in theorizing, and evaluating ‘public space’.

Hiroba is usually regarded as functionally equal to the Western plaza or square and the prototype of Japanese public space. A retrospective review of the typological evolution of hiroba in Japanese public space development is explored. The research resurrects the term of hiroba as a concept in Japanese-type hiroba or Japanese hiroba, instead of hiroba usually as a model through formal imitation imported from the Western-type hiroba and later be applied in Japan. It finds the changing notions of ‘public’ (and its physical form in the typology of hiroba) in Japan and the close relationship between place-making and hiroba-ka in open space, Japanese kōkyō kūkan and hiroba-ka open space generated through architectural design by Japanese architects.

The research aims to understand the Japanese hiroba-ka open space within contemporary Japanese architecture and interpret its notions of ‘public’ behind it. Four case studies are chosen to explore the three main questions: typology, human behaviour, and their interaction and relation in generating hiroba and the notions of ‘public’ behind this process. The research finds that a series of spatial elements and attachment elements are conducive to the constitution of the physical setting of hiroba-ka open space. The spatial configuration of those elements is closely related to human behaviour. The open space typologies of those spatial elements in making hiroba in the four cases are extracted and analysed on their spatial meanings and characters. It argues that both typology and human behaviour are indispensable to the generation of hiroba-ka open space within Tokyo’s contemporary architecture. The hiroba-ka open space, therefore, is socially constructed place-making open space through the interaction between people and space through time. The research concludes that different from the lament on the fall of public space in most Western cities, Japan, as a country that lacks the notion of ‘public’ and spatial conditions to provide public space in the Western sense, has made a considerable achievement today. Japan has developed its own interpretation of ‘public’ and unique ‘public’ space –kōkyō kūkan by synthesis and dialogue between Western public space and Japanese hiroba adapting to the changing society.