Oku 公寓丨日本东京丨Buttondesign

Architects:Buttondesign

Area:78m²

Year:2023

Photographs:Masaki Komatsu

Manufacturers:Cosentino,NEW LIGHT POTTERY,NIPPON STEEL

Lead Architects:Kohei Kikuta, Yuzuru Murakami

Collaborator:Yuta Yoshioka

Collaborators:Kichi&Associates

City:Arakawa City

Country:Japan

Text description provided by the architects. This is a renovation of a 40-year-old apartment building in Arakawa-ku, Tokyo. A family of three lives in a sunny and airy environment surrounded by balconies on three sides located at the corner of the building. In the case of renovation, it is not possible to freely control lighting and ventilation from scratch. Therefore, we became involved in the project even before the property was purchased to examine whether the client's ideal design was possible and provided simple planning support to help the client decide.

The client requested that even though it was an apartment, the space should be open. To meet this request, we felt that what we usually value naturally applied. That is the idea that "openness" is not simply defined by the floor space of the interior, but that spatial expansiveness is created by incorporating the connection to the outside and the scenery into one's life. We attempted to make a proposal that only we, who design with an architectural mindset in interior design, could make.

In this project, we focused on the sensations felt through the human skin. Apart from the sense of sight, we feel the difference between indoors and outdoors through the air we breathe and the temperature we feel on our skin. We also feel the sensation of stepping on the soles of our feet. I have had the experience of wanting to take off my shoes in nature, so I incorporated a washed-out gravel finish into the flooring material, which is not used indoors, where people spend most of their time without shoes. I wanted to bring in the feeling of running around outside barefoot as a child.

To achieve this, we worked with the plasterer to create a subtle adjustment of the gravel so that it would not interfere with everyday life, and the unevenness was kept to a level that would not cause uneasiness. The result is a comfortable feeling as if you were walking barefoot on a flat monolith. Wool carpets are placed in areas where people spend time sitting on the floor, creating a different feeling underfoot and separating the different areas within the one-room space.

The floor is carefully insulated so that the temperature is almost the same as inside the room, but the pleasantly cool feeling and delicate unevenness evoke the sensation of spending time in nature, leading to a sense of openness that is different from the spaciousness of the space.  This is not a common practice in Japan, where people live without shoes, but the quality of life could be changed with a single-floor finish. A home that seeks only comfort is not necessarily a rich home. This project was an attempt to return to the way of living while staying close to the human senses.

Project gallery

Project location

Address:Arakawa City, Tokyo, Japan