Comments on Future House Now: Living Large in the Compact 9tubohouse

For Anonymous:
Most kitchen counters in the U....

2008-04-08T12:56:00.000-04:00

For Anonymous:
Most kitchen counters in the U.S. are 3 feet deep. If you live in the U.S. and are comfortable with the scale of your house, figure that the sketch on the website is to scale and enlarge everything according to that scale. (Example:Get a piece of graph paper. Each square represents 1 square foot. The counter is then 3 squares deep, the tatami room is about 9 squares by 9 squares. Measure other things in comparison to the counter and repeat) It wont be perfect, but it should give you a ballpark of some usable measurements. The other thing that might work would be to get the metric or English conversion of a tsubo and scale a printed version of the sketch from there.
Good Luck!

Why:
A human being should be the basic unit of ...

2008-03-18T11:13:00.000-04:00

Why:
A human being should be the basic unit of measure for building a home, shouldn't it?

The unit of measure doesn't matter for the final product. Metric measurements simplify building and calculations.

Unless you are building for a specific person who stays there their entire life the proportions can even be problematic.
We live in a house largely built by and for a short couple. We are significantly taller and the kitchen counters are too lower, the bathtub is too short etc.....

does anyone know where i can get a scaled plan of ...

2007-08-06T03:49:00.000-04:00

does anyone know where i can get a scaled plan of this house

I am glad you found my site, oska. I like your in...

2007-06-05T21:57:00.000-04:00

I am glad you found my site, oska. I like your insightful comments!

The 9tubohouse is also featured in the book Mini H...

2007-06-05T21:55:00.000-04:00

The 9tubohouse is also featured in the book Mini House Style. A good book with many nice compact homes.

Yes, I think so.

A nice example of the conc...

2007-06-05T09:26:00.000-04:00

Yes, I think so.

A nice example of the concept of a tsubo in the European tradition is the square that Vitruvian man is standing in.

Just discovered your blog today John. A very interesting read.

Thanks for the clarification, Oska. I really like...

2007-06-05T05:58:00.000-04:00

Thanks for the clarification, Oska. I really like your point about the anthropic measures. A human being should be the basic unit of measure for building a home, shouldn't it?

Both transcriptions are 'correct'. They are simply...

2007-06-05T01:55:00.000-04:00

Both transcriptions are 'correct'. They are simply using different romanisation systems.

Tsubo is a transcription using the Hepburn system. Tubo is a transcription using Nihon-shiki. The word is pronounced the same if you know how to correctly read the two different systems.

The advantage of the Hepburn system for English readers is that it is based on English phonology and thus naive English readers of transcribed words will usually get the pronounciation approximately correct. But it can also hide the real differences that exist between the sound systems of the two languages. For example the sound at the beginning of the name of Japan's tallest mountain, transcribed as Fuji in Hepburn, is a sound that does not exist in English and is only approximated by an English 'f'. Likewise the 'u' is not exactly the same.

The tsubo is equivalent to 6 foot square. 6 foot is equal to a fathom in English and is an anthropic measure equivalent to the height of a (tall) man or the reach of a man with arms outstretched, from fingertips to fingertips. Most languages and cultures have an equivalent of the foot and fathom measures and in japanese the fathom is the ken. So one tsubo is one square ken.

A tatami is 1 ken in length and 1/2 a ken in width. Thus two tatami placed side by side fill 1 tsubo.

As you can see, traditional Japanese architecture was built on anthropic principles. Personally, I like that (despite being 6'2" and not fitting on a tatami).

it's pronounced "tsubo," but there is a romanizati...

2007-06-04T14:20:00.000-04:00

it's pronounced "tsubo," but there is a romanization (used by the JSL series of books) that writes it "tubo." for those learning japanese, the latter romanization is actually a lot more helpful, even though it looks odd.

in fact, i believe there is no "tu" as in "two" sound in japanese whatsoever.

yeah - check this out:

http://en.wikipedia....

2007-06-04T10:01:00.000-04:00

yeah - check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_units_of_measurement

These are just great.

I think it is Tsubo....

2007-06-04T10:00:00.000-04:00

These are just great.

I think it is Tsubo. It also happens to be the name of my favorite shoe brand. http://www.tsubo.com/