2 The backyard gardens in Boston New York and Philadelphia have 6-8 ft high fences.

3 The ‘inward-looking’ house did not start with the Romans, and was developed simultaneously all of the world, how euro-centric.

4 Good fences make good neighbors. The absolution of privacy that is currently trendy in the name of ‘community’ is absurd, most people do not want to live in a glass box. Eveb the Farnesworth house has curtains.

The typology of entirely inward looking, layered housing is fundamentally Roman in conception and pervasive throughout history. It is rare that a sense of space is actually about space itself in mathematical terms. Everyone has their preferences, but I don’t find the volumetric composition of what was shown in alternative pleasing in any way.

Color palette is a symmetrical argument, and perhaps the one that is most closely associated with culture. What Japanese culture recognizes as a natural color palette is not western. I happen to love it (as did Wright, Scarpa, Neutra, Schindler, Breuer, and every other modernist who visited Japan in the first half of the 20th century) but some may not.

Having actually lived in a New York townhouse (as well as a London townhouse) I can tell you that the urban density is in no way comparable. The smallest townhouses in New York are roughly triple the size of this built area and many (most) run to four or five times the built area. There is no parallel to Japanese urban density in the modern world.

Mr. Kimura’s work has consistently seemed to be divisive here. I suppose that is a sign of quality. People who are making cereal boxes elicit scant debate. Personally, I am a fan of this studio.

Terry Glenn Phipps