Downtown Yokohama, close to an expressway exit, lacks the human scale of a residential neighbourhood, but for Riken Yamamoto living there was a matter of necessity. Owner of a mainly commercial property on a busy thoroughfare, he designed a penthouse with a difference for himself and his family above the shops and offices located below. He chose to turn his back on the unattractive urban setting, and instead assembled a cluster of rooms around the four sides of a wood-decked patio, sheltered by teflon awnings.

The family has the privacy of a courtyard house (an old Asian residential principle dating back to Han dynasty China) combined with the openness of a sunny rooftop setting. The windows on three sides face in towards each other, giving a comfortable intimacy within the context of family life, while the single-storey construction further excludes the surrounding city. Like the gazebo for which it is named, the assembly sits on top of the building; structurally separate, it creates its own small world.

As Yamamoto drily comments: “In my neighbourhood, signs of community life are most evident at a height of about four storeys.” Like many other areas in the country, it suffered in the mid-1950s from the Land Readjustment Law that allowed indiscriminate road widening — in this case from four metres wide to 25 metres. “The people who used to live on this street now live on the top floors of these buildings,” he adds.  

Nosé, Michiko Rico, Japan Modern: New Ideas for Contemporary Living, Periplus Editions, 2012