Sanaa Garden & house
Garden & House in Tokyo | © Iwan Baan

Ryue Nishizawa, co-founder of SANAA, designed this house as a composition of floating concrete planes and expansive glass walls, creating an ethereal interplay between structure and environment. The design fosters a sense of ascetic domesticity, where the absence of conventional walls and partitions emphasizes openness and fluidity. The dwelling relies on nature as its primary modifier, allowing light, wind, and seasonal changes to shape the living experience. By eliminating traditional enclosures, the house blurs the boundaries between interior and exterior, redefining the private and communal space concept in contemporary residential architecture.

Garden & House by SANAA Technical Information

The entirety is a wall-less transparent building designed to provide an environment with maximum sunlight despite the dark site conditions.

– Ryue Nishizawa

Garden & House Photographs
Sanaa Garden & house
Street View | © Iwan Baan
Sanaa Garden & house
Facade | © Iwan Baan
Sanaa Garden & house
Interior | © Iwan Baan

Text by Ryue Nishizawa

In a highly dense district packed with high-rise condominiums and office buildings, this building is the new home to two women in the editorial business who wish to work and live in this historical environment. They specifically requested that it include an office, common living space, private rooms for each, a guest room, and a bathroom. I got the impression that it involved a program somewhere between an office and a residence or a dormitory.

The site is a tiny rectangle of 8×4 meters. To the right, the left, and across the street are large buildings over 30 meters in height standing with no setbacks, making the site look like a small dark valley surrounded by massive constructions.

Suspecting that a building with regular frame walls would narrow the site’s already narrow usable space, I considered creating a building with an alternative method. My final structure decision consisted of a vertical layer of horizontal slabs to create a building without walls. A garden and a room are distributed as a pair on each floor. Whether it is the living room, private room, or the bathroom, every room has a garden of its own so that the residents may go outside to feel the breeze, read a book, or cool off in the evening and enjoy an open environment in their daily life.

Each room is smaller than the slab, allowing freedom to determine the relationship between the room and the garden regardless of the floor level. The entire building is a wall-less transparent building designed to provide maximum sunlight despite the dark site conditions. Delight in life is felt as you ascend the light, well-ventilated residence in this exceptional location in the dense urban fabric. Physical And Visual Balance

Sanaa Garden & house
Interior | © Iwan Baan
Sanaa Garden & house
Garden | © Iwan Baan
Sanaa Garden & house
Work Space | © Iwan Baan
Sanaa Garden & house
Stair | © Iwan Baan
Sanaa Garden & house
Stair | © Iwan Baan
Sanaa Garden & house
Stair | © Iwan Baan
Sanaa Garden & house
Work Space | © Iwan Baan
Sanaa Garden & house
Stairs | © Iwan Baan
Garden & House by SANAA Plans
Sanaa Garden & house
Section of the House | Ryue Nishizawa
Sanaa Garden & house
Floor Plans of the House | Ryue Nishizawa

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