Tokyo maze-home blurs boundary urban/nature, indoors/outdoors by Kirsten Dirksen on May 31, 2020 Step inside Boundary House and enter a maze of hallways, rooms, open-air patios designed to blur the boundary between inside …
Tokyo’s impermanent skinny house made to age well with owners by Kirsten Dirksen on March 19, 2017 Inheritance taxes on land in Japan means plots often get smaller as they are passed on. This “divide and sell” …
Indoor/outdoor budget home in Japan: affordable & permeable by Kirsten Dirksen on January 16, 2017 When a family of four asked architect Takeshi Hosaka to create a home embedded in nature on a small Tokyo …
Sneak peek at a skinny, multilevel & transparent Tokyo house by Kirsten Dirksen on July 4, 2016 When visiting Tokyo, we couldn’t resist taking a peek at Sou Fujimoto’s transparent “House NA”. From the architect: “Designed for …
Practicing forest-bathing: fewer maladies, more well-being? by Kirsten Dirksen on May 29, 2016 A belief that nature is good for you may sound like common sense, but in Japan, researchers have taken the …
More than work: Tokyo office grows own food in vertical farm by Kirsten Dirksen on January 24, 2016 In a country with very little arable land (only 12% compared with 20% in the US), in one of the …
8 micro-studios reassembled as Cubist family home in Japan by Kirsten Dirksen on January 4, 2016 With most of their micro-studios unrented, a family in Chiba, Japan was ready to demolish their 8-unit apartment building, but …
Moving walls transform home into office in Tokyo apartment by Kirsten Dirksen on November 2, 2015 To avoid paying Tokyo rents for office space, architect Yuko Shibata created moving walls that allow her to switch between …
Lolcat home Japan: old parking becomes loft for couple, cats by Kirsten Dirksen on October 4, 2015 Masayoshi and Yoko Matsumoto wanted a home designed for cats, because they love their cats and because they believe what’s …
Nakagin: 140 plug and play capsules float in metabolist tower by Kirsten Dirksen on August 9, 2015 Resembling clusters of space pods stacked 13 stories tall, the Nakagin Capsule Tower is the world’s first example of capsule …