Nakano House: Cat-sized cruelty
Designed by Suzuko Yamada Architects, Nakano House is not so much a building that is discreetly placed on a 26m high block of Tokyo as it is a building that is built. Despite its small size, this brutalist dwelling makes a surprisingly grand impression. Designed for a couple and their two cats, the homeviews the building not so much as a collection of rooms as a careful arrangement of elemental forces: concrete , light, air, and, of course, cats. “ If there’s a wall where the cat can live and a space where it can run around, ” the clients said. “ Over time, everything else will fall into place .” This light-hearted brief is exactly the kind of prompting that Japanese architect Suzuko Yamada is passionate about.
Image © Kei Sasaki
Compact concrete housing in Tokyo
When architect Suzuko Yamada designed Nakano House, she built a thick concrete boundary that covers the entire site from edge to edge, protecting and defining the interior. Inside, essentials like a kitchen, bathroom, and toilet are juxtaposed with less traditional details like a cat walk, railings, and stairs, giving the space a sculptural feel rather than functional. “ These components seem out of scale when compared to the size of the house ,” the architects explained . “Their scale is equal to or larger than the rooms themselves .” In this tiny house, there is no single vantage point from which to view the entirety of the space. Instead, the architecture becomes a series of tactile sculptures: the cold, damp feel of rough concrete, soft beams of light, and the faint rustle of cat paws.
Suzuko Yamada designed a compact brutalist home for a couple and their two cats.
“The Void Rope” by Suzuko Yamada
Architect Suzuko Yamada has created a choreography of emptiness within Nakano House. Life seems to take place not in rooms but in the voids between forms. Activities such as cooking or doing laundry become spatial negotiations between integral elements. The architects describe a kind of architectural natural selection, saying, “ It’s as if a series of objects have found their place within the structure .” The two cats move easily through new areas, scurrying around open spaces and corners, creating wind paths that carry fresh air and ambient noise from the street throughout the structure.
Nakano’s home occupies an entire 26-square-meter plot of land in a densely populated area of Tokyo.
The architects reject the notion of a “seamless integration” between architecture and life. Instead, they create productive friction. Street light clashes with concrete. Air tangles with railings. Cats defy gravity. “Architecture is in conflict with both life and nature,” they write. “They exist together, sometimes combined, but never mixed.” As a result, the house feels less like a house and more like a piece of urban geology, unwavering yet strangely poetic, like a brutal mountain buried in the cityscape. By resisting comfort, he creates something strangely calming. The space is alive because it doesn’t want to be alive.Two ladders and a catwalk are considered key elements of the design.
The interior features rough concrete surfaces and large-scale architectural elements.
