Unique Homes in Japan: Folded House in Tokyo

The structure of this home in Japan resulted from the ingenuity of the architects who were asked by their clients for a “wide open living space” in a densely-populated neighborhood in Tokyo, but who had to position the residence on a narrow 4.7-meter (15.4 feet) wide by 22-meter (72 feet) long building site.

The home, named the “House in Takadanobaba” and designed by Florian Busch Architects, is located in the Takadanobaba area of Tokyo, a few kilometers north of Shinjuku. The building site was an “urban gap” (as the architects describe it) which resulted from the constant practice of subdividing larger sites. The house is wedged between two pre-existing buildings.

The residence is essentially a concrete structural element rising out of the ground and folded at ninety degree angles to form the wall, floor, and roof planes, with the fold alternating the view from each level.

The architects write that “when the brief asked for a wide open living space where breathing within the confines of the city was possible, we proposed an architecture of the exterior that claims the space around it by extending beyond its limits.”

“The House in Takadanobaba is a departure from understanding housing as enclosing,” write the architects because the urban exterior continues in a fluid open fold that connects the spaces for “living in the interior of the exterior”!

“Being able to live with the seasons in the middle of today’s Tokyo is true luxury,” say the architects.

The floor-wall ceiling is a structurally continuous shell that is held both apart and together by very fine steel columns: 80-cm diameter columns are used on the first and second floors and 60-cm columns are used on the third. “Lateral torsion by seismic forces is countered by the structural composition’s using the building’s length of 18 metres.”

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