Unadopted space in dense urban environments is precious. The Kamagawa River, which flows through the centre of Kyoto, has broad landscaped banks that are used as informal communal space by the city’s inhabitants. On either side of this wide but shallow, fast-flowing stream, there are pathways for pedestrians and cyclists down at water level and away from the traffic, though they are sometimes clogged with Kyoto’s ubiquitous cheap personal transport, thousands of illegally parked bicycles.

The riverside hosts many informal activities for pleasure and necessity. On mild evenings, amongst its many users are students from the music school in the upstream part of the city, practising to the background noise of the river rather than their unappreciative neighbours in this typically dense Japanese city. Public areas close to bars and nightclubs become informal nighttime meeting places for the young – drinking and smoking amongst the burbling motorbikes whose lights provide the main form of illumination. There are more formal activities too – in the autumn, the annual festival of city clubs takes place on the riverbank. Visitors can get a hands-on taste of flower arranging, calligraphy or kite making (and kite flying). An instant city of temporary buildings made from plastic tents on wooden or aluminium frames provide a focus around which to base the ad-hoc activities.

However, there are also more permanently sited mobile buildings here. Rectangular structures can be found at regular intervals beside the riverside pathways, usually clustered around or under road bridges. Like the official buildings, these are also made on wooden frames and clad with plastic, however, these are illegal – the self-built homes of people who have been forced by economic necessity to live outside the normal pattern of city existence. They have no permission to be there but in a country where you can get a ticket for illegally parking your bike, the Japanese authorities are surprisingly tolerant of their existence.

Perhaps one reason for this is that these shelters are not hasty, thrown together eyesores, but carefully made structures well designed and manufactured. They are created by their inhabitants with an appreciation of climate and location – elevated on platforms to avoid the damp and provide ventilation, making use of natural shelter from the urban landscape. A wooden frame using cast-off timber from palettes or packing cases forms the basic structure around which is pinned or tied cardboard sheets, to brace the frame and provide insulation. On top of this is a cheap plastic cover, frequently a blue tarpaulin, which comes with ready made eyelets to allow it to be lashed with rope and string to the structure – rope is used because it is easily found, but also because it is more resistant to moisture than adhesive tape. These buildings have many of the psychological attributes of a conventional home – all have a “yard” at the threshold for storage of umbrellas, work and domestic tools. Some have a place for pets (fish captured from the river), and a secure location for the resident’s transportation (a bicycle). These unofficial residences are in the tradition of high-quality craftsmanship that is an integral part of Japanese culture, and with their re-utilisation and recycling of abandoned materials it can be argued that their presence is a visible, though not enviable, example of sustainable low-impact living.
Unless you specifically seek them out, urban interventions like this can be easily ignored. This is part of their builders’ survival strategy – if they are too audacious, the authorities might remove them. But it can also be argued that this subversive architecture has strong underlying design concepts, because even if it is not immediately obvious, it can actually enrichen the urban environment. It is building that is disregarded at first, but when established can have great influence on how people subsequently perceive and understand the city. Sometimes it is illegal, or at least on the boundaries of what can be done without permission. Sometimes, surprisingly, it is completely official – but still breaks all the rules about where and what you can build.

Subversive architecture can be temporary, mobile, or camouflaged – sometimes all three together. Temporary architecture can be minimal like the Kamagawa shelters but it can also be surprisingly substantial. “Temporary” and consequently “permanence” in architectural terms are relative assessments. Most people would consider Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia in Barcelona to be permanent, but compared to the Pyramids it has hardly been around at all. Building legislation puts limits on “temporary” construction, for example: a week, thirty days, or the summer season. Frequently, clever clients and their architects can use the same principal as used by illegal builders in order to gain official acceptance for a controversial development – erecting buildings with “temporary” permission in the hope (or the belief) that the project can be “adjusted” to permanent status at a later date. This is a useful, and still democratic strategy, for the change can only happen if the building has general acceptance by the public, otherwise they complain so vociferously that the city government must take note and force the project’s removal. In this way, unusual or avant-garde designs can be tried out, and gain acceptance in situations where they would not normally be considered.i

Mobile architecture can have similar benefits to temporary projects. We tend to think of architecture as something heavy and static, however all the functions that are carried out in conventional buildings can and are also carried out in mobile ones. Every aspect of human activity, dwelling, education, medicine, commerce, manufacturing has had a respective mobile building designed specifically to operate without a permanent location. Economy and necessity lead the way in mobile building because in most architecture, the site cost is a large consideration. Setting up a soba noodles restaurant hut in the middle of a busy traffic island in central Tokyo allows the site to be used during optimum business hours, without the inconvenience of rent and taxes to the proprietor. For the customer it provides a convenient and economic service, but also lends vitality and activity to the street for the city dweller. With appropriate checks on waste disposal, health and safety, itinerant architecture contributes enormously to a vibrant city environment.

Because the problems of constructing more ambitious mobile structures are complex, they often use innovative solutions that utilise new architectural forms and techniques. They can provide dramatic foils to their situation when placed in close proximity to historic or sensitive sites – often in locations where contemporary design would not normally be allowed. For this reason they provide vivid real examples of how innovation can be an appropriate alternative to more conservative solutions.

Innovation can also result from the need to make best use of an available resource. Shipping containers are almost without value in the West as they arrive filled with goods manufactured in China, Korea and Taiwan, and are then redundant as there is little to send back in them. These are also anonymous objects that are conveniently sized for human shelter, and consequently containers have formed the basis for both official and unofficial building. Site offices and storage sheds are common examples of commercial recycling, however, the projects by New York based architects and designers LOT-EK indicate the potential for more inventive re-use. Their designs have used the steel shipping container re-configured as an art installation, a shop, a gallery and as dwellings both in static and transportable form. The Mobile Dwelling Unit (MDU) makes use of the container’s standard transportation infrastructure using trucks, trains and ships, to make possible a re-locatable home.ii The unit is transported as an anonymous shipping container with sections that push out when it reaches its destination to provide a carefully designed, usable living space. LOT-EK’s container projects always leave the external painted skin in its original industrial condition – they see it as an important part of its identity, its way of belonging to the urban situation, but also a visual connection to its history as a recycled object used in a previous form.

Perhaps the most provocative form of subversive architecture is camouflage – buildings or objects that pretend to be something other than what they are. The most common example might be a van parked overnight in a city street that has been converted to living space. However, building structures can also be erected that pretend to be “official”, masquerading as objects or constructions common in city environments that have been conferred with “approved” status by the local authorities. For example, city construction sites have a wide range of temporary trailer buildings, scaffolding, refuse containers that have the potential to be adopted and adapted for use as homes, shops, offices, performance and play spaces.

The designer and artist Santiago Cirugeda creates buildings and objects of this type. He has developed a series of strategies that subvert official legislation and control to enhance city living with informal development that ranges from the distinctly temporary to the transient and permanent. For example, his ongoing Urban Refuge project uses temporary licences to create more permanent installations, for instance obtaining a permit to erect scaffolding to do repairs or maintenance and then occupying the new structure as an addition to the building. Another is called Urban Reserves. This uses the permission granted to locate a building refuse container in order to create a new public facility, for example a playground, a reading room, an information booth, exhibition space, or performance venue. The structure superficially appears to be the container, but is transformed into its new use on demand. Sensibly, he suggests that Urban Refuge constructors make their own new structure so that it looks like a commercial one so as to avoid confusion with any hire company. His most sophisticated projects have been temporary live and work spaces built on a redundant plot of land made possible by entering into a contract for water and electricity supply from a neighbour, the buildings are not legal but not strictly illegal either. The objective is not to take the land but to use it temporarily whilst it would otherwise be unused.

Subversive architecture doesn’t just break the rules – it challenges them and thereby makes us question what the rules are meant to achieve. It is responsive to need, and usually made available for use very quickly. It is usually also non-intrusive – it does not require big changes to its environment in order to exist and to work well. It can also be a catalytic form of development – unofficial inhabitation of space draws attention to the value of that space and leads to more formalised investment and improvements. When the “official” developers move in – it moves out to find the next opportunity. Subversive architecture is an essential tool for many people who are simply searching for a solution to their own problems, which might be extreme – unofficial building can be the division between a comfortable life and poverty, or even life and death. Because it usually needs to be affordable it is often built from economic or recycled materials. This architecture can have a richness and vitality that provides a cogent lesson in just how much can be achieved with very little in the way resources. This quality is recognised by professional designers who use it as a way of solving difficult problems in sensitive situations, to push back the boundaries of what architecture can do, and to provoke environmental change. The existence of subversive architecture poses an interesting question –what is architecture capable of that it is not doing already? The fact that so many people all over the world depend on it and are deeply engaged in making it suggests it is a powerful underground architecture movement that may provide some answers.iii

1. For further examination of this issue see Kronenburg, Robert, Flexible: Architecture that Responds to Change, Laurence King, London 2007.

2. For a detailed examination of the MDU see Kronenburg, Robert, “LOT-EK: Mobility, Materiality, Identity”, in Scoates, C. (ed.), LOT-EK: Mobile Dwelling Unit, DAP Publishing, New York 2003.

3. This essay is developed from ideas presented in the author’s contribution to the journal 2wice, “How to Construct and Argument - Architecture in the Margins of the City”, vol. 9, no. 2, New York 2006.