Sayama Flat / Schemata Architects

Architects: Schemata Architects
Location: Sayama-shi. Saitama Prefecture, Japan
Architect In Charge: Jo Nagasaka
Project Year: 2008
Project Area: 2,227.24 sqm
Photographs: Takumi Ota

In this renovation project we have refurbished an apartment block that was built in the post war period of high economic growth in Japan. The building was originally designed to provide 30 residential rooms using a housing module called ‘nLDK’, an efficient system widely used in Japan.

We attempted to redesign this standardized series of spaces to provide accommodation suitable for a complexity of contemporary lifestyles.

The design principle we followed here was redesigning the space only by removing elements without adding, and improvising the layout of each of the apartments on site, without having drawn their plans in advance.