Images courtesy of Studio Velocity

In the 1950s, the Japanese firm Studio Velocity, headed by Kentaro Kurihara and Miho Iwatsuki, reconstructed a residential development in Mihama, a coastal city in Aichi Prefecture. The substantial deterioration of the structure led to the demolition of some of the two-story buildings deemed unusable. The construction of ten wooden dwellings was meant to attract new inhabitants to the idea of an intergenerational community in a region of steadily decreasing population. To encourange neighborly interaction, the limits between public and private are blurred through living rooms that open in four directions and through long wooden benches protected by slanting roofs with large eaves.