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This is a familiar story that is, of course, not unique to Japan:
“Danchi”, or apartment blocks built by Japan’s housing agency during the country’s high-growth period, may look grim and outdated in today’s Tokyo, where flashy glass and steel towers reign.
However, I only just learned that, since 2013, the Japanese houseware brand Muji has been renovating apartments within these housing blocks in an attempt to reduce vacancies:
But danchi are becoming hip again, thanks to modern renovations by lifestyle brand Muji, which is turning the poky, multi-room flats into open-plan studios.
The above excerpts are from a 2015 article, but this partnership between Muji and Japan's Urban Renaissance (UR) Agency continues to this day. Today, they're also focused on creating a greater sense of community within these danchi neighborhoods.
It's a logical collaboration. Both want to bring good and affordable design to the masses. And obviously there are brand benefits for Muji. It's a way to expose more people to their products.
But what I find particularly interesting is that it, once again, shows the potential of a strong brand within the real estate industry.
According to the same 2015 article, as soon as Muji completed its first round of apartment renovations, UR saw 2x the number rental applications from people in their 20s and 30s. Perhaps the number is even higher today.
Clearly what happened is that you had young followers of the brand who said to themselves, "oh if Muji is involved, it must then be cool and nice, and so I'd like to live there."
I mention this because, as a gross generalization, real estate companies don't seem to focus on their own brands in the same way other companies do. (Again, I'm making a gross generalization.)
Instead, they often rely on 3rd party brands -- hotel brands, fashion brands, and whatever else -- to augment as needed. (See "Dubai is now the capital of branded residences.")
Maybe this is truly the optimal way to do it. Just partner as needed. Or maybe more real estate companies should invest in their own brand.
Photo by taro ohtani on Unsplash
This is a familiar story that is, of course, not unique to Japan:
“Danchi”, or apartment blocks built by Japan’s housing agency during the country’s high-growth period, may look grim and outdated in today’s Tokyo, where flashy glass and steel towers reign.
However, I only just learned that, since 2013, the Japanese houseware brand Muji has been renovating apartments within these housing blocks in an attempt to reduce vacancies:
But danchi are becoming hip again, thanks to modern renovations by lifestyle brand Muji, which is turning the poky, multi-room flats into open-plan studios.
The above excerpts are from a 2015 article, but this partnership between Muji and Japan's Urban Renaissance (UR) Agency continues to this day. Today, they're also focused on creating a greater sense of community within these danchi neighborhoods.
It's a logical collaboration. Both want to bring good and affordable design to the masses. And obviously there are brand benefits for Muji. It's a way to expose more people to their products.
But what I find particularly interesting is that it, once again, shows the potential of a strong brand within the real estate industry.
According to the same 2015 article, as soon as Muji completed its first round of apartment renovations, UR saw 2x the number rental applications from people in their 20s and 30s. Perhaps the number is even higher today.
Clearly what happened is that you had young followers of the brand who said to themselves, "oh if Muji is involved, it must then be cool and nice, and so I'd like to live there."
I mention this because, as a gross generalization, real estate companies don't seem to focus on their own brands in the same way other companies do. (Again, I'm making a gross generalization.)
Instead, they often rely on 3rd party brands -- hotel brands, fashion brands, and whatever else -- to augment as needed. (See "Dubai is now the capital of branded residences.")
Maybe this is truly the optimal way to do it. Just partner as needed. Or maybe more real estate companies should invest in their own brand.
Photo by taro ohtani on Unsplash
I came across this apartment on ArchDaily this morning and I immediately thought to myself, "this looks like the Lagoa neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro." (Rio is one of my favorite cities and we nearly spent a few weeks of winter 2021 in this particular area.) So I opened it up and it turns out I was right. It's a recent apartment renovation, in this building, by Rio de Janeiro-based architects MZNO.
I then got onto the floor plan:
Circular building floor plates invariably create fan-shaped suite layouts like this one here. From my experience, these can create some really beautiful spaces up near the face of the building, but they tend to work better when you have a bit more space to play around with. You're also going to end up with diagonal walls and probably a radial structural system. In this case, the suite is just under 1,000 sf.
I wondered if this might have been two suites that were joined together, with the previous demising being the radial shear wall behind the couch (see above). There seems to be two entrances to the suite on this plan. But then I looked at active listings in the building and this seems to be a typical layout. So I think they just stripped things down to the existing structure in order to open up the plan.
The other item that stood out to me on the plan was the long corridor off the primary bedroom. But again, looking at other plans in the building, I can see that it was initially designed as a walk-in closet. This makes more sense, but it's also a compromise brought about by this being a relatively deep plan.
The bedrooms are "tetrised" together to make efficient use of a limited amount of linear glazing. An alternative trade-off (in this second plan) would have been to give it more frontage, and then bury the office (escritório). But I suppose there's a good argument to be made that it's better to have more light in your office than in your bedroom.
MZNO was probably thinking along these same lines when they designed the linear kitchen in the way that they did in the first plan. By aligning it perpendicular to the suite's exterior glass, you're able to gain access to a view and some light even when you're toward the back of the suite.
Finally, the other thing about circular buildings is that they allow you to do cool circulation spaces like the above. In this case, all of the common area corridors are single-loaded, and wrapped around a huge lightwell in the middle of the building. This maybe isn't so good if you suffer from vertigo, but it's obvious that these corridors are serving as an extension of people's living areas.
And since this is Brazil, they're naturally filled with greenery.
I came across this apartment on ArchDaily this morning and I immediately thought to myself, "this looks like the Lagoa neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro." (Rio is one of my favorite cities and we nearly spent a few weeks of winter 2021 in this particular area.) So I opened it up and it turns out I was right. It's a recent apartment renovation, in this building, by Rio de Janeiro-based architects MZNO.
I then got onto the floor plan:
Circular building floor plates invariably create fan-shaped suite layouts like this one here. From my experience, these can create some really beautiful spaces up near the face of the building, but they tend to work better when you have a bit more space to play around with. You're also going to end up with diagonal walls and probably a radial structural system. In this case, the suite is just under 1,000 sf.
I wondered if this might have been two suites that were joined together, with the previous demising being the radial shear wall behind the couch (see above). There seems to be two entrances to the suite on this plan. But then I looked at active listings in the building and this seems to be a typical layout. So I think they just stripped things down to the existing structure in order to open up the plan.
The other item that stood out to me on the plan was the long corridor off the primary bedroom. But again, looking at other plans in the building, I can see that it was initially designed as a walk-in closet. This makes more sense, but it's also a compromise brought about by this being a relatively deep plan.
The bedrooms are "tetrised" together to make efficient use of a limited amount of linear glazing. An alternative trade-off (in this second plan) would have been to give it more frontage, and then bury the office (escritório). But I suppose there's a good argument to be made that it's better to have more light in your office than in your bedroom.
MZNO was probably thinking along these same lines when they designed the linear kitchen in the way that they did in the first plan. By aligning it perpendicular to the suite's exterior glass, you're able to gain access to a view and some light even when you're toward the back of the suite.
Finally, the other thing about circular buildings is that they allow you to do cool circulation spaces like the above. In this case, all of the common area corridors are single-loaded, and wrapped around a huge lightwell in the middle of the building. This maybe isn't so good if you suffer from vertigo, but it's obvious that these corridors are serving as an extension of people's living areas.
And since this is Brazil, they're naturally filled with greenery.
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