Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
U RBAN HOUSE , T OKYO , J APAN Today more than ever the small
ARCHITECT house serves as a testing ground
K AZUYO S EJIMA & A SSOCIATES for architectural ideas. In few
places is the ground so testing, so
expensive, crowded, and prone to
tremors, as central Tokyo.
And in few societies are ideas
and, it might be added, trends so
tenaciously pursued as in
contemporary Japan. Kazuyo
Sejima’s Small House is easily
found at the end of a short cul-de-
sac in Tokyo’s affluent Aoyama
district. It’s a miniature tower
1
A space-age mansard?
2
Form of house is generated by
rights of light regulations.
3
House becomes transparent at the
back, overlooking temple grounds.
4
Constant interplay between
translucency and transparency.
5
1 Open steel shaft core.
34 | 7 5 35 | 7
ar july 2001 sejima done 10/7/01 5:46 pm Page 36
angles about the perimeter. The terrace that looks across the In a climate prone to chilly
outer skin is simply laid against empty lot to the towers of winters and warm, rainy
this cage. Ground level entry Shinjuku in the middle distance. summers, the Small House has
steps are formed from a folded The chamfered form of the only a few operable windows,
plane of concrete; external metal Small House results partially mostly to the east. It is expected
rungs provide service access to from neighbourhood zoning and to act as an inhabited flue, warm
the roof above. sunlight demands: it’s a air rising to be expelled upstairs.
The architect has divided the miniature cousin to Hugh Floor-to-ceiling expanses of glass
programme into four distinct Ferriss’s 1920s images of are screened by thin slips of white
elements. In a semi-basement is metropolitan massing. The curtain. Sejima’s independent
the parents’ room with storage canted sides are however work, and that in association with
recessed beneath the clerestorey determined more by Sejima’s Ryue Nishizawa, is marked by
second floor plan
fenestration and a tiny lavatory. strategy of stacking, a strategy ostensibly contradictory
Raised slightly above street level shared by such current vanguard characteristics: it appears both
is the hall and guest bedroom. On projects as MVRDV’s Dutch functionalist and natural,
the piano nobile – the broadest Pavilion at the Hanover EXPO machine-like yet so delicate as to
and tallest space – are kitchen, (AR September 2000). In Sejima’s be almost ephemeral. With the
dining and living quarters (one work, the envelope becomes large glass panels tilting in both
shelf has an eye-catching display fabric stretching between horizontal and vertical directions,
of recent Sony products). The differently-sized slabs. The floors the Small House seems less like a
house terminates in a bipartite themselves are concrete, held tree house and more like a tree
zone with a comparatively grand between an ingeniously itself, a weeping willow perhaps.
bathroom and an enclosed roof engineered steel cage. RAYMUND RYAN 6
6
House terminates in bipartite zone
with grand bathroom and enclosed
roof terrace.
7
1 parking Fundamentally, house is an
2 entrance inhabited flue.
3 guest
4 kitchen
5 living/dining
6 main bath
7 enclosed terrace Architect
8 main bed Kazuyo Sejima & Associates, Tokyo
9 light court Project team
Kazuyo Sejima, Yoshitaka Tanase, Shoko Fukuya
Structural engineer
Sasaki Structural Consultants
Photographs
36 | 7 basement (scale approx 1:120) Courtesy of Shinkenchiku-Sha 7