We attain to dwelling, so it seems, only by means of building. The latter, building, has the former, dwelling, as its goal. Still, not every building is a dwelling.

The Old English and High German word for building, buan, means to dwell. This signifies: to remain, to stay in place. The real meaning of the verb bauen, namely, to dwell, has been lost to us. But a covert trace of it has been preserved in the German word Nachbar, neighbour. The neighbour is in Old English the neahgebur; neah, near, and gebur, dweller.

Building and thinking are, each in their own way, inescapable for dwelling.

Only if we are capable of dwelling, only then can we build.

- Martin Heidegger

Sennett's Corrosion of Character and Heidegger's Building, Dwelling, Thinking interacting on the site of SANAA's Moriyama House, Tokyo, which is arranged as a set of distinct housing components forming a network of compact structures[1][2]. Aside from its modularity (and flexibility) and play on house/garden public/private polarities, I'm drawn in particular to the proportions of the site. How the dimensions of both street and house are strictly related to the human body, despite it being a suburban location, how this kind of scale makes it seem all the more dwellable.

Photographs by Takashi Homma & Iwan Baan, from the books Tokyo and Single Story Urbanism.