Row House in Sumiyoshi: Bring an Umbrella to the Bathroom

The middle of three

The plot was once the middle house of three, in a wooden terrace of the kind known in Japan as a nagaya. Ando had grown up in one himself. Here, the middle house was pulled down and a concrete box put in its place, under four metres wide and about fourteen deep.

A third of that box is a courtyard with no roof. On the ground floor, the living room is on one side of it, and the kitchen and bathroom are on the other. Upstairs, two bedrooms face each other across it, joined by an open bridge.

To get from one room to the next, you go outside.

On rainy days, that means an umbrella. In most houses, you check the weather before leaving. Here, you check it before going to the bathroom.

The blank wall facing the lane belongs to the same idea. The house does not look out at the street. Light and wind come in from the sky instead, through the courtyard, as Ando’s way of bringing nature into a crowded city. So does the rain. That was not an oversight. It was invited.

Advice from the architect

The house soon had a reputation for being hard to live in. It was hot in summer and cold in winter. Ando’s advice was simple: if it is hot, take something off; if it is cold, put another layer on; and if it is still cold, put up with it.

Years later, according to one account, it was Ando who suggested it might be time to put a roof over the courtyard. The residents declined. Having come this far, they said, they would carry on as they were.

A prize, and a plaque

In 1978, the house was put forward for the Isoya Yoshida Prize. Tōgo Murano, one of the most respected architects of the older generation, chaired the selection committee and went to see it. It was not bad, he is said to have concluded, but the client who had it built and went on living in it deserved more credit than the architect. The prize, he suggested, should go to the client.

The following year, the house won the Prize of the Architectural Institute of Japan. It was the first big step in a career that would later take in the Church of the Light and, in 1995, the Pritzker Prize.

From the lane, I could see only one thing inside the doorway: a small plaque on the back wall.