One Minute Architecture: NA House - Sou Fujimoto

The NA House by Sou Fujimoto, in Tokyo is beautiful. It has been compared to Mies’ Fansworth house. I love glass houses, but I couldn’t help but feeling that this is NOT A GLASS HOUSE. To me, conceptually at least it is not, not like Mies’ Farnsworth, or Philip Johnson’s Glass House. The house has brought fame to the architect Fujimoto, and again it is really beautiful, very delicate with it’s very thin steel frames and 21 different floors set at various heights. The concept of the stepped floors is beautiful, but I can’t help thinking that it is not a glass house. A glass house to me is that it combines the freedom from the context (providing shelter) while at the same time morphing into it’s surrounding. A glass house keeps the outside out while at the same time it taking it in. In the model, drawings and the pictures in books and magazines the house seem to wanting to do this, the reality however, looks quite different. Time to explore some more glass houses in Tokyo, trying to see if there is one. By the way the NA house is notoriously difficult to find. But a big thanks to my friend Alastair’s map I finally managed to find it: Music by van der Modular TR606, Elements and Clouds