ISSHO Architects

The idea for a housing complex planned in Tokyo is to defy a typical housing typology, such as a use of outside exterior staircase that often creates discontinuous streetscape and distracts good contacts of living space with natural fenestration and ventilation. By stacking and arranging utilities and programs such as kitchen, bath, living, loft and terrace of five housing units above the ground floor dedicated for access, it does not necessitates an exterior staircase and maximizes the exterior contacts for living and bedrooms. To bestow an open yet distinctive urban gesture, the design emphasizes an indistinguishable character of collective housing ‘who is living where?’; it composes an abstract building facade that window location rather mystify what is inside.