Nexus world International Housing

Rem Koolhaas / OMA – International Housing, Nexus World Kashii-Fukuoka Japan, 1991

This project consists of 24 single houses in the Kashi district of Fukuoka Japan, each three stories high, grouped together to form two blocks. Each house is penetrated by a private vertical courtyard that introduces light and space to the center.

On the lower level, a foyer leads to individual entrance doors; beyond each door is a white-cobbled patio. A continuous staircase leads to individual rooms on the second floor and the living quarters on the third – a suite of living, dining, alfresco and “Japanese” rooms where screens and curtains generate different configurations.

A closed cyclopean wall wraps around the outside of the blocks so that they can eventually serve as plinths for Isozaki's future towers. The roofs of the domed Japanese cells are covered with grass. 'Escaping' from the walls are the lines of the floating roofs of the living rooms. They resonate with the mountains that surround the city bowl.

Each house offers a variety of spatial conditions and tectonic contrasts: closed versus explosive, intimate versus open, public versus private, tall versus light, concrete versus abstract.