Brass House is a minimal home located in Tokyo, Japan, designed by atelierco. ​The site is known as the birthplace of Somei-Yoshino cherry tree, and is located in a dense residential neighborhood in Somei Komagome, Tokyo. While yearning for the open spaces, the owner wanted a house providing privacy from neighbors. Combining such contradictory directions would be a big challenge.

The house is flanked by houses and buildings on both sides but, fortunately, two open spaces in front of and behind the property allow the creation of a vista in this crowded place, and which made the designers think whether it was possible to incorporate this house into such built-up area. Half of the house is shown from the open space and the other half is stacked by closed spaces. Considering the symmetry, the southern elevation was designed in the shape of a iegata, with two roofs hanging over a center ridge.

Instead of calling one space as daily and the other as non-daily, these two spaces are always complementing each other. By intersecting comparison and inducing a complimentary relationship that the studio attempted to leave poetic nuggets throughout the house to shine on the owner’s daily life.

Photography by Jumpei Suzuki, Yasuhiro Nakayama