House A

Office of Ryue Nishizawa

This house in central Tokyo is located on a narrow site that stretches along a north-south axis. It is lit primarily from the south, where the dense urban fabric opens onto a vast empty plot. The shape and size of each of the required rooms were decided upon according to the function and furniture layout required and then distributed along the site as blocks, shifted along the short access to establish a fragmented edge that allows light to penetrate to the centre of each space. 

Given that the client lives alone and requested that the design allow for entertaining guests and having friends spend the night, we looked to create a predominantly social environment. Each room has the character of a living room and the hierarchy of domestic space is established primarily by the relationship between double and single height spaces clustered along the site.