Atelier Kempe Thill

This northern-style housing project in Aomori, Japan, addresses the issue of urban housing in the twenty-first century. The housing block proposed by Atelier Kempe Thill, taking second prize in the open competition, is in fact a park building that creates 6,000 square meters of rare green space for the crowded Japanese city. The house itself is repeated four times around the building ground and offers two hundred “plots.” On the plots, individual villas would be built that can be chosen out of a catalogue. Cars can be parked on the elevator-accessed galleries directly in front of the houses. The plots can be closed by 7-meter-high folding glass walls, which change them into winter gardens for the houses. This enables the garden to be used the whole year round, limiting energy loss during the cold season.