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Narrow Concrete House in Japan

ATV’s Japanese-speaking foreign reporters visit a narrow concrete house:

Apparently 4 people live in the house. Their bedrooms are only big enough to fit the beds themselves, and in the case of the parents, the area under their bed serves as a storage cellar. It’s a bit cramped, but looks pretty nice inside.

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40 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - March 13, 2010 at 6:12 am

Categories: Odd / Strange Tags:

cando

some words that popped into my mind while watching the video:

prison cell, nuclear shelter, Silence of the Lambs(the book, not the movie)….

on a more serious note, this building looks dangerous to me… how are people supposed to escaped in the event of fire?

gilgamesh

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that that might be at least part of the reason it’s made of concrete.
N

What’s going to catch on fire? The concrete walls?

afsfasadf

Well the beds, but still why didn’t they paint the walls?

Greg

That’s looks awesome – I want one.
toro

What is the deal with concrete lol
They seriously need to control the excessive concrete addiction, there’s
way way too much of it! A nice balance of green would be nice!
Total lack of creativity here as well in this house and just concrete in general.
Life needs color at least lol
Concrete is so boring,ugly, gray, and just lacks it all

Use brick lol what’s wrong with brick? It’s not so ugly lol

weirdo

Bricks….? In earthquake land?

http://www.onivoro.com.br Kojima

Brinck is not exactly a problem in a place with quakes. You can have a very flexible wall with them, using the right technique.

And remember, Tokyo Station’s main facade is made of bricks and resisted to the 1923 Kanto Quake (but suffered several damage while the WWII).

toro

Thanks Kojima
toro

Also Kojima some of the Meiji Era architecture is actually not so bad, seen some nice brick buildings from that.
Basically life, soul, personality, originality etc needs to be put into our living and working spaces. We are not machines, are human beings lol
Mark

Yes, facade brickwork can withstand ‘quakes provided it is reinforced and tied back to a suitable structure, usually a reinforced concrete or steel frame. Free standing brick structures without reinforcement easily fall apart in strong ‘quakes – as will concrete structures without sufficient reinforcement.
toro

right on good to know that

toro

well anything better than concrete right? it’s so lifeless and just plain…way way too much concrete

Brick is earthquake resistant, no more resistant than concrete
toro

Have you read Alex Kerr? yes a major concrete addiction gone way too far!
http://www.onivoro.com.br Kojima

Yeah, I think there is a excess of concrete too. Of course you have termic isulation, but you can get it with others materials.
Another bad point for me is the lack of natural illumination in couple bedroom.

Despite these point, I liked the layout and the space organization. Plus the illumination in the last floors.

Ps. About the concrete, you can break the gray and make things more “colorful” with furniture. Like this one. http://realestate.homes.co.jp/contents2/column/hobby/file10/
toro

Who would want a house that looks much like a cemetary, muchless build like one lol

Needs more life, style, creativity, even originality into our living spaces

But please gotta be something better than concrete!

At least in a
home other than concrete you feel like a living breathing human being with
a soul.

Desperately need real good architecture education here

This hotel’s architecture is good Nylo Hotels
http://www.nylohotels.com/

Look at some of the contemporary, and other architectural magazines and you would see what I mean.

Santiago Calatrava for example gives architecture an organic look to it
Rob A

1. That guy with the hosts is HUGE. Who is he?

2. Coolest house I’ve seen in Japan in a while. I love the little crawl-spaces on the bottom couple floors.

3. Kawaii musume-san indeed.

4. I wonder how it would hold up to earthquakes?
helical

The only problem I would have with cement construction is that it seems like it won’t give at all during a fall or a bump and hurt more in case of an accident. Also you need adhesives rather than pins to hang anything on the walls.
I also thought the floors might be horribly cold without slippers, but I guess they have wooden floorboards.
Roppongi Health

Concrete walls looks cold to me, but it’s a matter of taste.

Books on top floor is not that good, during earthquake they can fall down 2 floors into that kitchen area.
leitmotiv

Environmentally harmonious building design such this ensures plenty of heat in the summer and plenty of cooling in the winter….Kudos to the forward-thinking architects who took strategic advantage of the four seasons in the year – which are unique to Japan.

Michael

Surely this is irony or bad English. The four seasons are unique to Japan? Huh? Harmonious building design..uh..how? By being a concrete box? If anything, it’ll soak up heat in the summer and be like a sauna, as most concrete buildings are in hot weather.

Me no understand.

http://whatjapanthinks.com Ken Y-N

Whoosh!

Read leitmotiv’s comment again carefully.

crayonmonkey

I’d want to polish up some of that concrete so it shines like marble!

I’m a bit curious about that glass panel above the kitchen. Seems like a great idea for natural light, but I wouldn’t like to clean it after a tempura frying session!
Michael

Lacking a view of the outside world, this is more like a prison than anything else, as Kojima has already mentioned.
toro

Instead of total concrete, mix it up with hinoki wood with contemporary
industrial design for example.
It does at least have unique places for storage lol

Total concrete, however, just makes no sense, it’s far too lifeless the cemetary look it just doesn’t work at all
This is a good example
http://www.trendir.com/house-design/tag/contemporary-houses

Gotta have life in a place of living and even working
Gotta overcome the idea of the boring cookie cutter deal
helical

Either you lost it and it isn’t coming back, or you’re that imposter again.

The [Real] Overthinker

It is the imposter. James can confirm that from the email. I have been utterly swamped with work since getting back from my holiday in Dec, and while I check this site out at times, I have not posted anything since early Dec.

JackCrow

Felt a bit claustrophobic by watching this yesterday, and rewatched today.
Maybe because I’m tall and bulky, but again, there are some thigh spaces there.
While the concrete has structural integrity, I fail to see the lack of side windows ( even if they do not overlook anything ), as a good side.
Really the upper open light area, and the front windows are ok, but their bedroom looks like a fallout shelter.
Also the point about the “greasing” of the library from the kitchen below, evades me.
Sure you can live like that, but it looks like a level maze from some DOS FPS game from the 1990′s.

Is it functional, I’d imagine yes, is it comfortable, well if you consider a solitary confinement cells comfortable, you surely will these narrow spaces.

The pure unpolished concrete gives it the raw look alright, but that does not mean you cannot put some wood to “breathe” a bit from the inside.

If this is a finished look, which I doubt, it is depressing at best, if it is work in progress, well, there is much to do still.

I’d punch a few windows on the sides, right away, If I’m moving in, I tell you that much, not because I like widows very much, but purely for the unentombemnt factor.

All in all if they like it, power to them, who are we to judge.
toro

This reminds me of that funny Geico commercial awhile lol

Sekisui House actually builds some decent homes but this house apparently isn’t from Sekisui.
Hope architects can understand the importance of balance, and that a house is more than just a roof over one’s head! And that the concrete addiction
is just unbelievable lol
The creativity and originality is severely lacking in this particular case

How ECO is this house even as well?
No green shrubs, some cactus, palm trees, bamboo I mean dude its like totally nothing but artificial.
The architects did a real lousy job with the house even though some areas are clever.
Garamon

It’s like a furnished stairwell, in my opinion. I too think they should do something about the concrete, maybe paint it or something. I also don’t like the steel grating on the floors.
Hal

Everyone is talking about the house, but was no one distracted by the weird outfit the white guy was wearing? I can’t really describe it. I also wonder if it was chosen by the studio to make the guy look more awkward or foreign.

Luis

Him and the outfit in general, remind of the video the 80s video, ‘She drives me crazy’ by I forgot who. He reminds me of the tall weird looking dude in 80s europop videos.

http://www.hormel.com Vonskippy

Everyone is saying “it needs more windows”?

Why, so they can look out and see the whole 30 centimeters of open space between their house and their neighbors house?

They should have inset a bunch of flat panel displays into the walls and surrounded them with window moldings. Then they could have whatever “view” they wanted.
Mark

The house looks similar to the designs of the well known and award winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadao_Ando
fashion police

What is that dork presenter wearing?!!!

an undertakers coat?!!

Honestly too many gaijins have absolutely awful fashion sense here in japan. It’s embarrassing.

and get a hair cut ya wally.
AzabuSamurai

They casted the gaikokujin because his huge size makes the house look even smaller that it is.
jho

It so weird that they purposely picked the extra tall white dude to enter the house. It definitely distorts the viewers perspective of how big the house is.

I love concrete and I think it does need more green in it though. Some moss on the concrete would be cool.

The daughter looks cute though.^^
toro

Amazing to me that one of the very things that’s right in front of their nose is that of bamboo which is actually not too shabby of a building material, and with all this ECO buzz going on it probably wouldn’t be such a bad idea to have that.
Cement is boooooring! And not even ECO to say the least! And it gets rather cold very quickly and very hot in the summer, don’t even think about walking barefoot on that lol the cement addiction needs to seriously be controlled and balanced.

Bamboo although silly as may be, actually is more tensile than steel and it doesn’t rot either! It’s very hard to break as well

Bamboo is more than just a hat on your head!

I dunno just a thought
Fat Tony

Another “Asahi foreign reporters” post without someone mentioning what they think of Sahal Rosa? Amazing. Must be a record!
toro

Also notice when it comes to maintenance, it is not done well.
Some things that are beyond old, rusted, broken etc just seem like they don’t bother fixing it, repairing it, or update it at least. At least with some abandoned homes or an abandoned place knock it down and build something new in its place.

I don’t know if it’s because it’s just far too old to even do something about it, or
they don’t have the money to do anything to it?
It seems they sure like to let things just rot which is concerning

Narrow Concrete House in Japan

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