AD Classics: White U / Toyo Ito
Toyo Ito was commissioned for this building by his older sister after her husband sadly lost his battle with cancer in the 1970s. Having lived for a number of years in a high-rise apartment, she and her two young daughters wished to move to a site which had more connection to the ground; as luck would have it, the site next to Ito’s own house was being sold at the time.
AD Classics: Silver Hut / Toyo Ito
Known for his conceptual designs, Japanese architect Toyo Ito is arguably one of the world’s most innovative architects. He began his architectural career with a project for his sister in 1976 called “The U House,” located in the center of Tokyo. The U House contained windows on the inside facing a courtyard instead of the typical outward-facing windows. This was Ito’s first experimentation with the ways that light enters buildings, and he expanded this idea to an even greater extent in his next project: the Silver Hut in Nakano, Tokyo.
Read about the Silver Hut after the break.
Video: NA House by Sou Fujimoto Architects
Above is a video by Vincent Hecht, an architect and filmmaker in France, which highlights the NA House by Sou Fujimoto Architects. The video is part of a new collection of architecture movies about Japanese architecture. Designed for a young couple in a quiet Tokyo neighborhood, the 914 square-foot transparent house contrasts the typical concrete block walls seen in most of Japan’s dense residential areas.
