NA House by Sou Fujimoto

Located on a quiet street in a residential neighbourhood in Koenji, Tokyo.

Floating off the ground, great contrast to adjacent buildings.

It’s not often that you get to enter a private house in a foreign country without personal contacts. Most of the time I will have a list of buildings I would want to visit and then embark on the most enjoyable mission of finding them. I usually take a few snaps while on site but this is almost always just from the outside, even with public buildings many times photography is not allowed (exception – Shibaura House, awesome public space/studio). So when I visited NA House and was able to actually go inside and meet the owner (!) and a staff from Sou Fujimoto, this encounter has got to be one of the highlights of my whole trip. Special thanks to students and teachers from Singapore Polytechnic who were kind enough to let me join them on their exclusive tour of the house, I think the pictures speak for themselves so enjoy!

Interior – lightness and transparency

Kitchen storage via ladder

Window detail/junction

Access to exterior roof space

Expansive views to outside

Natural light all around

Can’t escape from removing snow with a flat roof

Plants! Notice the different patterns of the blinds and pop of colour of potting and furniture

Love how you can dangle your legs over the edges

Entrance, love the vintage car!

Blinds not just on perimeter for privacy from street but also interior to create visual partitions

Piping and plants on outside

Modest in scale

White like snow

The project has been photographed and published widely, I have also posted about it before here. You can find quite a lot of information about it online including Fujimoto’s concept of  conceiving the house like a tree. I think the most interesting piece of information I learnt that day after talking to a staff member from Fujimoto was how there is no modular or calculated method in the platforms. Many iterations of models were made until Fujimoto felt the proportions were ‘just right’ and then the final design was set. It took about 3 years to design.

The other interesting fact is the naming of Fujimoto’s houses, where he names the houses according to the owner. Therefore NA House is named after the owner, Namba-san. She is lovely and generous as you can imagine, opening her house to strangers and answering any questions we may have. Thank you for the inspiration!

With the proud and friendly owner

It must have been quite a sight to see so many students in her house!