With space at a tight premium, the Japanese property system is good for ensuring a better return on space for developers, and for satisfying clients who want to be sure their architects are getting the best possible value for money from their investments.
In this, Shiro Architects has an edge and it comes in the early training of its design principal, Hiromi Lauren.
The pressure applied by Japanese lending banks to developers to ensure they are getting the very best yield per square metre ensures the principle of managing precisely for floor-space optimisation is instilled in that country’s young architects’ minds at an early age.
Taking away 500mm from each column span for car parking space … increased the number of units, and the agents selling them are always most interested in the number of units you can get into a building, not necessarily how luxurious each one is
These pressures factor into architects’ work a stricter discipline of managing for space in ways probably unmatched in local Australian architectural practise.
As an example, Hiromi says, “Recently, we we working on a very long site with another well-known practice’s development approval (DA) submission. Their car park was too generous, and consequently each unit became too big against the sizes demanded by regulations, and this was therefore wasteful.
“The problem was that that firm’s bedrooms were too big, and Harry Seidler always said the bedroom is for people to sleep in, and not for other activities.
“This means it is always best that bedrooms conform to the minimum for that purpose, and that floor area is always better spent on enlarging the area available for other rooms.
“However, where the City of Sydney imposes a regulation minimum floor area of 80 square metres per two-bedroom apartment, that architect’s scheme was 88 or more square metres.
“In that case, because the site was long enough to do so, by taking away 500mm from each column span for car parking space, we created space for another span, and by taking out three square metres from each unit and making it 85 square metres meant we could find the area for an extra one-bedroom unit.
“The floor-space ratio (FSR) was exactly the same, but it increased the number of units, and the agents selling them are always most interested in the number of units you can get into a building, not necessarily how luxurious each one is.”
