How a Japanese Family of Five Live in Their Small Open Air Home Tokyo 57sqm 613sqft

Wow, the weather is so nice. We can always feel nature just using your sky. I think this is a very good idea for everywhere in the world. It's something universal, you know? If I were living in New York, maybe I would make this house. My name is Zajiro. I live here with my wife and my three kids. I'm an artist and also an architect. So this is the door. It says, Public School City of New York. We bought this in New York, me and my wife. We lived at Queens Astoria 18 years ago. Entrance door opens inside. It's good for security things, you know? You can push people out. In Japan, usually door opens this way. They have shoes just inside the entrance. The entrance is so small. When I come in, you take off shoes here. This is Japanese room. You can stick these magnetic things. Things you don't want to forget. My kids love to rip this, like every day. You can open here and there's a storage that you don't want to show to people. I put these things for something for outside. You put it here. Before you go out, you have to wear your coat. This is my grandfather bought this like 30 years ago. After we move here, we need a mirror to see your whole body. I first filmed it, but it doesn't look good. So I add this. This is where my shoes, my family's shoes. And we want to show it. A lot of Japanese architects try to hide shoes or the wearing. Showing things are more decorative. I designed bathroom just right next to entrance. And I have a window here. When I designed it, I thought it is useful to wash dirty kids coming out from park. But once I designed this, I found that I can feel what's going on in this living room. It's really nice to take your time in your bathtub. This place is the living room with no roof. This is outside. You have to put things inside. So TV and piano and things that we have to make inside is in here. I put the piano because the TV, piano and sofa. If you have these three things, you can make the place as a living room. So you need a piano. You always need a piano for a living room. Nobody plays piano now. My wife, she's interior designer. And she decides what to put in here. If somebody tries to give me a ball, I have to talk to her. Is this okay? She's so strict about what you should use or not. This is a plate made of resin. I collected a lot of things. It looks cute, so I'm going to put it here. Look, it's cute. Christmas tree is very important in this season. I've been collecting them for years. There are a lot of things that I can't buy anymore. So I put them here with my daughter. At first, I wanted to put the green here. But it's in the way. We have a balcony here. And it's a good place to grow green. So I put greens and lightings in my artworks. And you can hang a lot of things here. These are the lighting and art. A lot of my work, I can make it in my small study room. But some of the big art, I made those paintings in this place. Because we have a very tall height. That one is Hikaru Oozora. It means brightening big sky. And my son wrote it. And it fits to this room. Hey, looking for a last-minute Christmas gift? We've got you covered with a subscription to our NTS Quarterly magazine. Four beautifully curated issues sent quarterly. Packed with inspiring stories of small space living, sustainable design and urban culture. It's designed for design lovers who like their design without the swank and the wank. More than a mag, this is a collectible keepsake. Born to live on your coffee table, favourite bookshelf or wherever inspiration belongs. Give the gift of an NTS SubClub subscription. It's the gift that keeps on giving, four times a year. And hey, we won't blame you if you grab one for yourself too. This is chair made of paper. That was the original product. It started breaking, so I add this collage so that it looks better. When snow comes, you have to move everything out of here. We don't want to divide this place into two places. We have this window here so that we can close it. This is inside and this is outside. But we want this space to be the same place. So we have the same colour. We want to use a lot of colours because my art is using a lot of colours. The painter was surprised that when we built this house, is there five colours? This is our kitchen, dining room. These chairs, we bought this. Every baby comes out, we bought one of these. So we have three of these chairs. I want him to bring this when he lives alone. This light is from Ingo Maurer. There's a switch here. It's a strange shape. I wanted to have three small ones, so I bought them. There's only one door here. This is where I always show what I like. This is what I use. I bought this and decided to put it here. I decided to put it here for this. It's a dedicated shelf. I put it here so that customers can't see it. We don't use this kind of light in the kitchen. There are a lot of fluorescent lights and lights with lines. I wanted to use this. If you move this, it gets in the way. So I put it diagonally. This part is thin. If it's thin, it's easy to take it out. I use everything here. I can use everything. I don't forget anything. It's getting narrower. I didn't make a wall on one side of the stairs. It's an open staircase. The lower part is also open. I put a wagon in it and store it. I put my daughter's things here. I bought a shelf that looks like a shop. The mirror is a storage. It's narrow here. If there are five people, it will be crowded in the morning. If you don't like it, you can put it here. I put what I can use here. I want to hang this round mirror on the washbasin. I thought it would be difficult to make a washbasin. So I put a one-piece washbasin. It's under the stairs. I think every small house does that. Under the stairs, toilet. It's the same bracket. This is a room for changing before the bathroom. These are the changes for the family. What we do is just take a bath and a seat. We talk to people like this. We have a curtain here. If you really want to care about this, you can do it like this. Sometimes my children have to take a bath when a party is going on. We use this. But that's the only time. You take a bath in Japan for a long time. Sometimes mother and children go to bath together and spend a long time here. This place is a place where you can relax for a long time in Japan. This is the door of this toilet on the second floor. It works like this. But it also can separate the first floor and the second floor. This is a small study for me. I use this for my work. That's a bucket. You can put beer inside. You have a door on the back side, so you can sit like this. This is a bedroom. We sleep here. We don't have a bed. We use a futon here. These are the tables. You can use your room wider. But you can also use this table when they want to do something. Do some homework or study. These are DIY. I made it. This is a playroom. They play video games and stuff in here. This is IKEA's light. I like it. It looks like my house. This is the green space. I painted it because I pour water everywhere. This is a very good place for green. We made this shelf with my son. We need a lot of shelves. This is the kids' place. We have three kids. The children have to go up to sleep. Their sleeping place is here. They have to go up. Originally, we had a ladder here. But when we made this shelf, we made it as a ladder. You can go up like this. This is a shelf and ladder. I had an idea that the place is so small. We don't want a ladder itself. Ladder and shelf make space really compact. That's why we made it. I made this step so that I can go up from here. Like this. This is how I go up. It's a storage. I'm left-handed, but I use a right-hand guitar. You can play somebody's guitar anywhere. If you go to a bar and there's a guitar, you can play it. But if you can only play a left-handed guitar, you can just play it in your house. It's a good way. All the clothes are in here. You can see everything. It's very easy to manage. We used to have a studio, a desk here. But we moved it. We're thinking how to use this place now. I have a lot of artwork like this. Maybe I can put artworks here. Or maybe we can book the shelf here. I'm opening this... How do you call this? Top. Vinyl top. This one is the heaviest one I have used. Sometimes you have to open. When people came around, or when you do the barbecue in fast food, this is like version 5.4. It took like three years or something to complete. Now my kids are really getting bigger. Everybody has a kid, and they try to make their kid's room and everything. I think that's too big for them. I think I'm going to live with my wife for like 30 or 40 years. The time with your kid is not so long. When I designed this house, that was my part of this concept, this house. Subscribe.