Kobuchi Apartment / Toru Kudo + architecture WORKSHOP

Architects: Toru Kudo + architecture WORKSHOP
Location: Kanagawa, Japan
Design Team: Toru Kudo, Koh Kitayama, Mayumi Watanabe
Project Year: 2006
Photographs: Daici Ano

Project Area: 443.56 sqm
Structural Engineer: EJIRI Structural Engineers
Mechanical Engineer: Kankyo Engineering Inc

This building is like a big house, consisting of several rental apartments and six residences for the exclusive use of the owner families. In addition to an urban housing methodology that prioritizes economic performance, this proposal extends the concept of grouped families.

The four-level building comprises steel-structured owners’ residences held above a base platform of reinforced concrete-structured rental apartments, and sandwiched in between is a piloti area with the function of public space. This garden-like floor can be accessed by all residents, and acts a living room for the entire buildin g. This is a proposal for a new family structure, in which different family clusters are mutually independent but at the same time coexist without mutual exclusion.