Any designer can tell you how satisfying it is to find a design solution that allows a single element to perform ‘double duty’ by fulfilling multiple functional requirements, and it’s always a pleasure to come across examples of such solutions in vernacular buildings. Two such examples from Japan, in a way the mirror image of each other, are the agemise and the shitomi-do.
The agemise or battari-shogi is a fold-down timber platform or bench for the display of wares (or for sitting on) in front of a machiya townhouse. In its folded-up position, it can either sit in front of a blank wall, or in front of a koushi lattice that fully covers the main opening or the facade, or it may itself form part of the security arrangement over the opening; it also provides impact and intruder protection to the lower half of the opening, and when folded up, sends a clear ‘we are closed’ signal to passers-by. When folded down, it forms a kind of extension of the interior floor out into the street.
Fine example of an agemise folded up against the koushi of a machiya facade.
Agemise folded up to form the lower half of the protection to the openings, with the upper half formed by folding shutters.
Folded-down agemise showing their function as platforms for the display of goods, in this case books.
The shitomi-do is a top-hung lattice shutter most closely associated with Buddhist architecture. It covers either the full opening or, as is more often the case for openings that extend to the floor, only the top half. It is usually held open in a horizontal position, on hooks at the ends of iron struts that hang town from the eaves; shitomi-do are usually well protected from the weather by the deep eaves of the roof above.
Lattice shitomi-do in the open position on a Buddhist temple building.
Top-hung shutters can also be found in vernacular applications, where they are often more exposed to the elements, and so also function to provide protection to the opening from sun and rain. These vernacular examples are usually board-clad rather than latticed, so are not strictly shitomi-do; the other main difference to their architectural counterparts is that they are usually propped open in an angled position, on angled timber struts that rest on the sill of the opening.
Rustic top-hung shutters propped open on a building in Okinawa.
More refined example of top-hung shutters.
Top-hung shutter to a small unglazed window.
Looking out through half-opened shutters. This image illustrates another of the functions served by top-hung shutters: that of filtering or ‘muting’ the view.
Example showing agemise and top-hung shutters used in combination.