A case of the blues. David and Koichi had a clear vision for their home: open, light-filled, and industrial with a bit of colour and a couple natural elements. Architect Kei Makito from Roovice helped them achieve it all – and blue floors to boot.
“I think we had a clear idea of what we wanted in a home from the very beginning. We wanted to create an open space that would have exposed walls and light entering from all directions”.
“There’s an advantage to renovating a space while living in it. Over time we were able to see what worked and what didn’t as everything progressed”.
“I think we had a clear idea of what we wanted in a home from the very beginning”, David Buchler told Never Too Small of the 59sqm/635sqft Tokyo apartment he shares with his partner Koichi, and their cat Sophie. It only takes one look at their home to see that their vision for an “open space [with] exposed walls and light entering from all directions” was realised. The pair worked with architect Kei Makito from Roovice who helped them manage the project to create an industrial-feeling space with a bit of colour and a couple natural elements.
The apartment is on the seventh story of a building constructed in 1972 on the west side of Tokyo. When David and Koichi bought it, it had a long passageway from entrance to a central kitchen and living room area as well as three separate bedrooms. The couple decided to open the space up and gain some height by removing all interior walls and the ceiling boards (which are often lower in older Japanese apartments like theirs). David and Koichi did a lot of the renovations themselves, with many weekends and holidays spent removing the walls, which separated the bedrooms. The pair saw this as an advantage, however, noting how living in the space during renovation allowed them to “see what worked and what didn’t as everything progressed”. The finished floor saw the kitchen moved to the side, a custom joinery unit installed to section off the bedroom, and the bathroom layout slightly rejigged.
One of the things that makes the apartment’s design unique is its thoughtful mixture of different materials – from exposed cement to stainless steel and rich woods. Similarly, on the floors, one half is composed of the original concrete, treated and finished with a varnish, while the other half is finished with blue PVC tiles. The genkan-style entrance offers a little microcosm of this larger design decision. As you step up from the lowered concrete floor entry onto the blue tiles of the kitchen, you’re surrounded by exposed concrete walls and pocket lights, simple plastic crates for shoe storage, and a sliding galvanised steel door opening onto the “eraser pink” bathroom.
The thing that is so special about this apartment is how the spaces are connected – literally – and share a cohesive design vocabulary, yet, they feel totally distinct. The kitchen, for example, is sleek and almost futuristic with its steel IKEA unit, which they raised for easy cleaning and to meet their height requirements. A vintage metal medical trolley on wheels provides some additional storage and becomes the perfect drinks tray for entertaining. The space is made cosier by a small circular dining table with a pendant light overhead and the custom joinery storage pod with a soft strip lighting above it for a relaxed ambiance.
The living area, which faces onto the kitchen from across the room, is clearly demarcated by a transition onto concrete floors from the PVC tiles – a divide that is marked by a thin brass strip between the two materials. The zones, however, are also demarcated by their ambience. Filled with antique furnishings, collectibles, plants, and books, the living room feels warm and relaxed. A mounted bookshelf marks the divide into studio space, where David and Koichi share an adjustable trestle table for working on their laptops, cutting patterns, and sewing. A clever duct rail lighting system allows them to move the lights around the space with ease.
To the final corner, tucked behind the other side of the custom joinery unit, is the bedroom. The space is encircled by a ceiling-mounted curtain, which wraps around the foot of the bed to create a sort of cocoon. Opened up or closed off, the bedroom is simple, calming, and uncluttered and maximises the footprint with floating side tables from Hay and bed storage. To one side of the bed, the unit offers a large wardrobe, while to the other the balcony – one of three total in the window-filled apartment – offers them beautiful sunset views.
