The apartment had five studios and each studio was about 30㎡.
There was only one door for restroom in the studio. The rest of the studio was just an open space with no partitions and walls. But unlike ordinary studios, the kitchen and the restroom were carefully situated in the center of the room. And also the wall on the far end had unique windows. The windows next to the central wall stretched from bottom to the top. Those two points helped create spacious atmosphere and the room look bigger than its actual size. Mr. Ogawa who designed the apartment said that was the reason why I named it "the ultimate studio apartment".
I think the building is too unique to be called the ultimate house, and it is not useful for everyone. However, I was very encouraged by visiting the building. I think about house designs in my job, but there are many rules, the construction standard act and in-house rules. So, we often think architecture design very narrowly. But "the ultimate studio apartment" disregarded these rules. It opened my views on approaching ideas from a different angle in designing houses.
No rule is the key phrase. This reminds me of a family in India surviving on a busy roadside in a downtown area. There was no structure but a faucet with running water. I had seen street people in Japan, but India family were different from Japanese cases. In many cases Japanese street people were alone in humble shack on a empty place. I felt the India family were completely free from architectural rules.
I think it is difficult and unfair to compare lifestyle that the Japanese architect suggested and the situation that Indian street family face. However the Indian family also opened my eyes to the role of a house by extreme way.
