Nishikasai Apartment-2

“We change our town on our own” This was the motivation that brought life to the “Nishikasai APARTMENTS-2” project.
The project aimed at building a structure with functions and design which would welcome not only the residents but also workers, business owners and visitors. Right across bakery & café “gonno bakery market” located on the first floor of the building is an open space “7-CHOME PLACE” built in between the building and “Nishikasai APARTMENTS” in 2000.
There are a co-working space “FAR EAST of TOKYO” and Komada Architects Office on the second floor and the third and fourth floor are residential floors. The structural wall with the grid of gate-like openings that are each 3 m × 3.2 m wide, the gallery which can be found on the exterior of the second floor, the pathway to upper levels that make a circle, the “7-CHOME ROOF” on the rooftop laying at the end of the pathway, and the “7-CHOME PLACE” on ground floor together construct an architectural infrastructure.
The building achieves a structure with combined purposes and applications. It not only stays flexible to the changes in its application that could be brought about by the aging of the building at short notice, but also plays a role of constantly characterizing the space. In the context of the history of Japanese collective housing, this project aims to re-socialize collective housing, and in retrospect, it was also about decomposing the structural system of collective housing.
We aspire to a place where a diverse group of people interact with each other and which will be the hub of new values and culture to revive the community as a sphere of everyday life.