KBDA
Project#:	1995-036
Recognition:	Honorable Mention
Name:	House in Nipponbashi
Location:	Osaka, Japan
Completed:	1992
Firm:	Waro Kishi
Architect:	Kishi, Waro
NARRATIVE DESCRIPTION:
This house in Nipponbashi is designed on a very small lot in the downtown area of Osaka. To the architect, it provides a prototype for an urban house. It contains a roof garden and the design is conceived as an urban house possessing on its top floor a paradise in the city. In reality, the building is 2.5 meters wide and 13 meters deep. By lowering the ceiling height from the first floor through the third as much as possible, the architect was able to create on the top floor a terrace occupying a third of that level and a dining room with a 6-meter ceiling height taking up the rest. This space is extended both longitudinally and vertically. The idea centered around providing the users of the house with a life close to nature, even in the middle of the city. The architect achieved this by creating a living space floating in air, vertically removed from urban clamor.
USER ASSESSMENT:	Tetsuo Kinsho Osaka
I am the owner of ‘House in Nipponbashi’ and I have been living in that house soon after completion. My house is located in the heart of the city, but it gives us a very comfortable space to live. Especially, in the fourth floor, living space and roof garden, we can always live with nature even in the city. We are very pleased to live in ‘House in Nipponbashi’ in other words.
JURY COMMENTS:
This residence expresses elegance and finesse – an expression of a contemporary urban typology which is essentially Japanese in character. An imaginative and refined solution for a severely restricted site.