From June 17 to July 8 the exhibition ‘Tokyo Love Hotels’ will be on display in the ‘Blokkenhal’ of the Architecture Faculty. This exhibition presents the results of field research on the phenomenon of the Japanese ‘Love Hotel’.
The exhibition contains a selection of photos and maps and uses the case study of the Love Hotel to show the specific urban condition of Tokyo.
With 35 million inhabitants, Tokyo’s the world’s most populous urban agglomeration and a key center of global financial markets and international commerce. Such concentration of capital in a densely populated area has led to sky-high real estate prices – it’s extremely difficult if not impossible for young people to afford a place to live on their own in the city.
In Tokyo most young people therefore have no choice but to remain living at home with their parents until they marry, and many continue to live with their parents even after marriage, as caring for elderly parents is an expected part of Japanese culture.
In the strict hierarchy of Japanese culture, the individual is viewed primarily as a part of the community of workers. Intimacy is kept separated from the rest of a person’s life. Especially over the past fifty years, the meaning of intimacy has become an important cultural theme in Japan that crops up in an economy producing all kinds of media, ranging from Manga comics to violent erotic movies.
This combination of densely populated urban life, capitalism, tradition and modernity has culminated in the creation of specific places where intimacy can be expressed in anonymity: the Love Hotel.
Love Hotels offer rooms to rent by the hour, providing an opportunity for people to meet at any time during the day or night. Love hotels are used by people of all ages: couples, young sweethearts, lovers…. Love Hotels provide much more than an hour of rented privacy for intimacy, though. The rooms aren’t simply used for erotic purposes: in most love hotels, rooms are fully equipped with pinball machines, DVD systems, video games and other gadgets.
Love hotels are safe havens, providing the individual a means to temporarily escape the strict hierarchy of Japanese society, or to simply take a break from hectic city life. Supermarkets close to the hotels are a first stop for couples. From there they walk to their temporal homes. Rooms are equipped with microwaves to complete this almost domestic ritual.
Love hotels are extremely discrete. The staff is low profile; often, visitors don’t meet any staff at all. The entire organization of the hotel is based on credit cards, computer systems and ingenious automatic route directions. Here, architecture is used to achieve the ultimate anonymity.
The exhibition ‘Tokyo Love Hotels’ reveals some of these different notions of home in the urban landscape of Tokyo. As the Japanese say: ‘When we’re looking for privacy, we go into the city’. (DM)
The exhibition ‘Tokyo Love Hotels’ is a project by TU Delft architecture students David Mulder and Max Cohen de Lara, in conjunction with X-M-L, a network of students and young professionals interested in the city as a source of ‘cultural production’.
On the way to the Love Hotel(Photo: X-M-L/David Mulder and Max Cohen de Lara)
From June 17 to July 8 the exhibition ‘Tokyo Love Hotels’ will be on display in the ‘Blokkenhal’ of the Architecture Faculty. This exhibition presents the results of field research on the phenomenon of the Japanese ‘Love Hotel’. The exhibition contains a selection of photos and maps and uses the case study of the Love Hotel to show the specific urban condition of Tokyo.
With 35 million inhabitants, Tokyo’s the world’s most populous urban agglomeration and a key center of global financial markets and international commerce. Such concentration of capital in a densely populated area has led to sky-high real estate prices – it’s extremely difficult if not impossible for young people to afford a place to live on their own in the city.
In Tokyo most young people therefore have no choice but to remain living at home with their parents until they marry, and many continue to live with their parents even after marriage, as caring for elderly parents is an expected part of Japanese culture.
In the strict hierarchy of Japanese culture, the individual is viewed primarily as a part of the community of workers. Intimacy is kept separated from the rest of a person’s life. Especially over the past fifty years, the meaning of intimacy has become an important cultural theme in Japan that crops up in an economy producing all kinds of media, ranging from Manga comics to violent erotic movies.
This combination of densely populated urban life, capitalism, tradition and modernity has culminated in the creation of specific places where intimacy can be expressed in anonymity: the Love Hotel.
Love Hotels offer rooms to rent by the hour, providing an opportunity for people to meet at any time during the day or night. Love hotels are used by people of all ages: couples, young sweethearts, lovers…. Love Hotels provide much more than an hour of rented privacy for intimacy, though. The rooms aren’t simply used for erotic purposes: in most love hotels, rooms are fully equipped with pinball machines, DVD systems, video games and other gadgets.
Love hotels are safe havens, providing the individual a means to temporarily escape the strict hierarchy of Japanese society, or to simply take a break from hectic city life. Supermarkets close to the hotels are a first stop for couples. From there they walk to their temporal homes. Rooms are equipped with microwaves to complete this almost domestic ritual.
Love hotels are extremely discrete. The staff is low profile; often, visitors don’t meet any staff at all. The entire organization of the hotel is based on credit cards, computer systems and ingenious automatic route directions. Here, architecture is used to achieve the ultimate anonymity.
The exhibition ‘Tokyo Love Hotels’ reveals some of these different notions of home in the urban landscape of Tokyo. As the Japanese say: ‘When we’re looking for privacy, we go into the city’. (DM)
The exhibition ‘Tokyo Love Hotels’ is a project by TU Delft architecture students David Mulder and Max Cohen de Lara, in conjunction with X-M-L, a network of students and young professionals interested in the city as a source of ‘cultural production’.
On the way to the Love Hotel(Photo: X-M-L/David Mulder and Max Cohen de Lara)
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