Takamitsu Azuma, Tower House (1965)

Kazuo Shinohara

1963, House With An Earthen Floor

Apart from a 2 m wide access lane on the north-east, the site is closely surrounded by neighbouring properties. The truncation of the roof on the northern side of the house results from a sunlight regulation while, in addition to this, nothing could be built within the two arcs described by the easements of the two high-voltage lines that pass north-south directly overhead.

The oblique volumetric illustrates these restrictions. When it was found that using the common tangent of the line easements to determine the roof shape severely restricted planning in the uppermost floor, we decided instead to use the precise arc described by each easement.

Circular or arcuate shapes recur throughout the house, Two half-metre diameter round columns uphold massive beams of similar section. These beams, in turn, support a continuous ribbed slab whose recurring section is determined by a 30 cm circle reset on a 7.5 cm module. The slab construction, running north-south on all three floors, is cantilevered to leave the north and south façades free of visible support. These façades with their use of glass-block infill and the circular staircase – just like the roof terrace and horizontal strip windows at Hanayama No. 4 – are conscious references to the early Modern Movement. This attempt to reinterpret certain elements of 1920s architecture is one of my recent themes.

The lively paint colours seek to emphasize the separateness of those elements composing each space and of the spaces composing the house itself. The objective (sachlich) freedom this implies from external conditions and decorum, with the resulting emphasis of differences between parts that fragmentizes the whole, instead of unifying it, is another of my current themes.

Kazuo Shinohara, House under High-Voltage Lines (1981)

As there are / apartments in our / own minds that / we never enter / without apology / we should respect / the seals of / others

one of Emily Dickinson’s envelope flap poems

We eagerly consume noisy ephemeridae, here with a bang today, gone without a whimper tomorrow—movies, beach-wear, pulp magazines, this morning’s headlines and tomorrow’s TV programmes—yet we insist on aesthetic and moral standards hitched to permanency, durability and perennity.

from “Vehicles of Desire” by Reyner Banham

Making a life and then unmaking it, or rather - modifying the spaces that were supposed to house specific things