The city as a house - a visual novel
IN THE VISUAL NOVEL I ERASE THE PRIVATE HOME AND FOCUS ON MY INDIVIDUAL LIFE WITHOUT RENTING A PRIVATE APARTMENT. A visual novel of the experiment of me a white European 30 year old heterosexual human while not inhabiting a private apartment in Tokyo over a period of time. My smartphone is my only property, my organizer. No need for private spaces in the future. A conservative private space consists of rooms to, wash, eat, delight and store. I used to live in an apartment in the past. The conservative apartment had 4 rooms. A bedroom, living room, a bathroom and a kitchen. I sleep in public spaces. In the train, in the love hotel, in the capsule, in the Anime Cafe, book and bed, 9h, or at the workplace.The bedroom is abolished. No more cooking. The infrastructure of the so-called Konbini and affordable food in restaurants, fast-food restaurants and street food stalls is abundant and an integral part of Japanese everyday life and culture.The kitchen is abolished. Bathing is carried out in public spaces. In so-called sentos. Bathhouses are not only meant for cleaning, but also for your well-being, beauty and health. The bathroom is abolished. The city as a house is a new strategy of dissolving one room after another. It is a Liberation. We don’t have to own or pretend to have property anymore. In 1903 Hermann Muthesius said: „Japan is in many respects the country that comes closest to one’s dream of paradise.“ Dissolving the private liberates and creates new forms of society. In the history of pre-modern Japanese housing the concept of puraibashii (privacy) was alien and it was unknown to the general population during the Meiji restoration. Pre-industrial Japanese households were ‘fluid’ spaces with virtually no privacy. The current situation in Tokyo allows for the emergence of a turbo-dense, capitalism-driven space generator for satisfying one’s personal longings and needs. The question is, whether the inbetween spaces, the decentralization, as well as networked and digitalized urbanism make it possible to live without private spaces. Is a new form of nomad living not only being constructed in digital and virtual space, but also in concrete space? Will this lead to the alteration of the city’s skyline and the creation of ruins of property? What will happen to these spaces should they become obsolete? Shifting privacy in non-domestic spaces can lead to different architectural consequences. The space left by this shift can provide new space for more and different infrastructure, which can add value for society. The resulting developments are driven by technology, money and societal needs. The city as a house depicts an illusion of private ownership of a place we call home and transfers it into the cityscape where the human occupies a certain amount of space while moving or resting depending on time and need. What does it mean to be freed from the urge of craving a nest? The city as a house is a strategy of successfully surviving without being dependent on the housing market. Let us use this system and reinterpret what it means to live without a home. It is a proposition of a new form of society. A new form of living. The next selfimprovement of humanity or going back to our roots. TheCityAsAHouse is a visual novel which is build with the Game Engine Unity to open up digital space for the human user to relive the experience ones created and open up new spaces.
credits:
Vivien Schreiber (unity Programming)
manuel Riegler (Soundesign)
