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Dividual Space and Liminal Domesticity in Tokyo and Seoul

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Dividual Space and Liminal Domesticity in Tokyo and Seoul Original Article The extended home: Dividual space and liminal domesticity in Tokyo and Seoul Sanki Choea,*, Jorge Almazánb and Katherine Bennettc aDepartment of Architecture, College of Urban Sciences, University of Seoul, 163 Seoulsiripdaero, Dongdaemungu, Seoul 02504, Korea. bDepartment of System Design Engineering, Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University, 3-14-1 Hiyoshi, Office 14-620E, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama 223-8522, Japan. cLandscape Architecture Section, Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture, The Ohio State University, 275 West Woodruff Avenue, Columbus OH 43210, USA. *Corresponding author. Abstract In Tokyo and Seoul a new type of space has emerged: dividual space. This space consists of commer- cial venues offering easy access to a surplus of contents and experiences with the private comforts and con- venience associated with domesticity. These venues proliferate in Japanese and Korean cities as, for example, the Karaoke Box (small Karaoke rooms) and DVD Bang (rooms for watching DVDs). Anonymous multi-tenant buildings encapsulating dividual space facilitate its accessibility and infiltration of the city. More than ordinary entertainment or compensation for deficient homes, dividual space has become an integral part of everyday life and expanded the possibilities of city dwelling. Dividual space challenges accepted theoretical categories for under- standing the city: It blurs distinctions between the home and the city into gradations of domesticity in urban space. Modes of socialization occurring in dividual space cannot be understood as private or public, but instead as inter- mediate liminal zones where individuals behave in a private mode in public settings. Domesticity and liminality characterize dividual space not only as an East-Asian phenomenon, but also as a broadly urban condition of density and mobility. An examination of dividual space therefore contributes to the literatures of Architecture and Urban Studies seeking to understand cities undergoing similar processes. URBAN DESIGN International advance online publication, 1 June 2016; doi:10.1057/udi.2016.10 Keywords: content architecture; dividual space; domesticity; liminality; public space Introduction Art. This lineage expands the ‘nomadic’ to public spaces that move and transform in response to Background institutional impositions of order. In architecture, Archigram imagined nomadic The idea of nomadism as a liberative force that dwelling in ‘Cushicle mobile environment’ (1966), subverts the fixed, bounded world of ‘home’ has ‘Suitaloon’ (1967) and ‘Moving Cities’ (1964). Toyo been a recurrent topic among architects. The idea Ito revisited the idea in ‘Pao for a Nomad Girl’ can be traced back to Benjamin’s flâneur, the Situa- (c. 1985), a shelter connected to the information tionists’ drift (Debord, 2006) and their urban visions networks of Tokyo. Ever since, the image of a – represented by Constant’sNewBabylon(1959– ‘nomadic’ life supported by media technology and 1974), a city for a nomadic population dedicated to publicly accessible facilities has construed a com- creative play, de Certeau and, most explicitly, mon interpretation of Tokyo (Hageneder, 2000). Deleuze and Guattari (Cresswell, 2006, pp. 49–54). Different degrees of urban nomadism occur in Careri (2014 [2002]) connects nomadic lifestyles the dividual space of Tokyo and Seoul. Most users with a lineage of art movements from Dada to Land occupy these spaces as temporary, hourly or © 2016 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1357-5317 URBAN DESIGN International 1–19 www.palgrave-journals.com/udi/ Choe et al occasionally overnight, complements to home. In We aim to shed light on the phenomenon from a extreme cases, newly homeless ‘refugees’ inhabit point of view at the intersection of Architecture Internet cafes, all-night saunas and (in Seoul) comic and Urban Studies. To Architecture’s theoretical rooms, as well as 24-hour fast food outlets (TJT, projects such as Archigram and Ito, we add a series 2007). A Japanese government study (ibid.) esti- of real spaces that present new possibilities for mated this population at 5400, comprising mostly nomadic dwelling. To Urban Studies, we add a young people doing low-pay, day-hire jobs, unable spatial typology connecting discourses on nomad- to rent apartments. In Japan, this kind of home- ism and public/private space. Our paper calls lessness represents growing disparity between rich attention to a series of spaces neglected by research and poor. Other dividual space refugees reject in both disciplines. We shed light on commonal- corporate ‘salary man’ hierarchies and/or modes ities between Japan and Korea, overlooked because of living, such as company dormitories (McCurry, misperceived as unique to Japan or Korea. Due to 2007; Fukada, 2012). This optional version of this omission, no one body of theory comprehends homelessness reflects shifting values among dividual space explicitly or cohesively. We address younger generations that abandon the traditional precisely this obstacle to research by establishing work ethic and related structures of living. the typology of dividual space, opening it to In Seoul, this optional homelessness seems to academic research. For this reason, this article does coincide with the sense of independence and anon- not fill a gap in an established body of coherent ymity dividual space provides (Catholic News academic literature, but rather establishes a con- H&N, 2009), typically appealing to unsettled sin- nection between diverse sources that might allow gles with temporary jobs or between jobs, rather this body of research to develop. than the long-term unemployed or low income. Our strategy is descriptive, that is, to ‘produce Park et al (2004) call this population ‘job nomads’. new knowledge by systematically collecting and Younger users tend to adopt PC bang (rooms) as recording information that is readily available to primary residences, daily contract-labourers the investigator’ (ibid., p. 65). The method inte- favour the cheaper comic rooms (manhwa bang) grates a literature review of sources in English, and single women choose all-night saunas (jjimjil Korean and Japanese, including academic journals, bang). In Korea as in Japan, homeless occupation institutional databases and popular media, such as constitutes an extreme form of dividual space Websites and newspapers. The documentation domesticity. This article focuses on the far more evidences the phenomenon itself and its interpre- common use of dividual space as an extension of tation across a range of sectors. home, not as a substitution. Our study is organized into four sections beyond this introduction. The second section questions the public–private dichotomy and proposes a syn- Purpose, relevance, method and structure of this thetic term: dividual space. The third section study describes sub-types of dividual spaces and the architecture that accommodates them. For this Following Deming and Swaffield’s (2011, p. 30) third section, we have completed urban-scale map- terminology, our study is neither ‘instrumental’ ping and fieldwork in the central districts of both (aimed at prediction and control) nor ‘critical’ cities to illustrate and further substantiate the (aimed at challenge and change). It is rather an documentary sources. The fourth section registers interpretive investigation of documentary sources, various understandings of the phenomenon, and as they describe and reveal dividual space, in order frames them through conceptions of liminality and to build a conceptual framework for understand- domesticity. The fifth considers, by way of conclu- ing this spatial type. Our study aims to formulate sion, the study’s findings and relevance. the emergence of a seemingly disparate series of We are/have been long-term residents of Tokyo commercial spaces in Japan and Korea as a distinct and Seoul, habituated to their languages and social urban phenomenon. If we conceive ‘dividual practices, and the dividual spaces under study. space’ as a distinct typology, what spatial charac- Our fieldwork methods (section ‘Dividual spaces teristics do its various commercial iterations share? and content architecture’) include participant What sub-types can we identify across both coun- observation in Tokyo (since 2005) and Seoul (since tries? And, in relation to architecture and urban 2008), and direct observation in downtown dis- space, what are the explanations accorded to this tricts of both cities (2009–2011). We directly phenomenon in Japan and Korea? observed 36 dividual space venues in Tokyo and 2 © 2016 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1357-5317 URBAN DESIGN International 1–19 The extended home 33 in Seoul, including different venue types and contact through ‘street walls faced in sheets of franchises to provide varied samplings. This field- plate glass, highways that cut off poor neighbor- work, summarized in the section ‘Dividual spaces hoods from the rest of the city, [and] dormitory and content architecture’, and our maps, photo- housing developments’ (Sennet, 1977, p. xii). graphs and drawings, supplements and illustrates Oldenburg (1989) focuses on the loss of informal the documentary sources framing our study. public life and introduces a comprehensive view of everyday-life spaces in the ‘third place’. The desig- nation recognizes places other than home – first Toward a Redefinition of Urban Spaces place – and work – second – for relaxation and communal experience. Hajer and Reijndorp (2001) ‘Private’ and ‘public’ offer a different discourse on the public realm of
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