Renovation was made on one of the rooms in an apartment complex designed by Shozo Uchii, Japan's leading architect completed in 1977. Unimaginable from the closed exterior facing the arterial road that crisscrosses the city center, the entrance hall is bright and breezy, and the architecture is lush with lively plants. The sequential richness of the common areas leading up to the entrance of each unit is a precious daily experience for people living in the city center that provides a sense of fulfillment of human sensibilities.

The idea was to extend this experience to the interior. The wall that once rose up in front of you when you opened the front door has been completely removed, and bright sunlight pours in from the small south-facing balcony, where you are greeted by the flowers and plants from the flower beds created indoors. Small balconies in urban apartments are usually used for storage and curtained off, but we maximized their function by making them usable simultaneously with the adjacent space. Sunlight from the south illuminates the entire room through the glass wall that divides the entrance hall.

In the original interior design from 1977, the bright south-facing service balcony was placed back at the end of the kitchen together with the laundry room. At that time, women were still in the middle of their social advancement and many of them were housewives, and the kitchen might have been a place where they spent a lot of time. However, for the young client family who both work, an open kitchen that can be used by the whole family was desirable, and the floor plan was changed drastically to place the kitchen in the center of the space.