Official

In the first place, I would like to briefly introduce what kind of apartment "Harumi High-Rise Apartment" was.

Design: Japan Housing Corporation (currently Urban Renaissance Agency) / Kunio Maekawa
Completed: 1958
Total number of units: 168 units (non-corridor floor dwelling units: approximately 39m2, corridor floor dwelling units: approximately 30m2)
Structure: Steel-framed reinforced concrete 10 stories
Features: The public corporation's first high-rise housing. Mega-structuring method using three layers and six dwelling units as unit, introduction of elevators (skip-type access method), tatami mats that are not bound by conventional dimensions, stainless steel press processing sinks, etc.

This apartment overlooks the night view of Ginza and overlooks Tokyo Bay.
What kind of people did you pay and live with?

According to the person who guided me, this apartment, built for workers, could be rented only to people whose monthly income is more than four times the rent.
According to the materials in the photo below, the minimum rent on the floor where the elevator does not stop is 12,000 yen.
When converted to the current amount, it is about 250,000 to 260,000 yen.
In other words, it was a luxury apartment where people with a monthly income of about 1 million yen and an annual income of about 12 million yen live!
As a result, many residents were presidents and managers, and black-painted hires lined up near the apartment.
(The elevator will be introduced in detail in the middle part.)

(A little more affordable rent is set on the floor where the elevator stops.)

The challenge for this apartment is to realize high-rise housing at the same cost as middle-rise housing.
As a result, the Company has adopted a large frame that can reduce the amount of costly steel frames and allow future expansion.
As a result, the number of elevators has been limited, leading to cost savings.

Furthermore, according to Maekawa's conventional plan, the first floor was planned to be a piloti (space surrounded by pillars) following Corbusier.
However, due to the government's order to put a room on the first floor in response to post-war housing difficulties, Piloti was not realized.

Then, from here, we will look at the dwelling units of the Harumi High-rise apartment (non-corridor floor dwelling units, corridor floor dwelling units).

The non-corridor floor dwelling unit is 39m2, which is about 10m2 wider than modern one-room apartments.
The entrance is made of iron and is designed to be used in a spacious balcony with shoes.
There are two rooms, a kitchen / dining room, a bathroom, and a washroom.

The room has the same width of the tatami mat and bran, so it looks neat.
In addition, Mr. Maekawa's commitment and ingenuity can be seen in detail, such as the same width of the window frame and the shoji door, the use of glass in the ranma to make the space wide, and the glass other than the top glass to prevent gaze from outside.

The sink is made by pressing a single stainless steel plate from welding.
It was the public corporation's first stainless steel sink, and more than 400 stainless steel plates were used until they could be processed as they wanted, and eventually pressed with Sugamo's guardian of children and travelers in four corners.
The hardships of engineers at that time are well conveyed.

This light is called "double-sided light" installed between the bathroom and the bathroom.
It was an excellent thing that could brighten both rooms at once and kept the cost down.

The photo on the left shows the restroom.
The public corporation has adopted a Western style of wooden toilet seats since 1960, but it will be introduced two years earlier in Harumi High-rise apartments!
Another feature of this Harumi high-rise apartment is that he did not dare to hide the piping so that the room could be wide.

However, in front of this washroom, there is a dining room.
It seems that the excrement of the upper floor flowed through the piping placed above the head, so it seems that you will be worried a lot during the meal.

The photo on the right shows the balcony.
This was also relocated and restored from Harumi, and I visited the residents who were looking at the cityscape from here during the active era.

Next, before looking at the dwelling units on the corridor floor, I would like to briefly introduce the corridor.
As you can imagine from the top photo, the corridor was long with a width of 2m and a length of 100m.
Mr. Maekawa set up the corridor as a playground for children and a place for well-end meetings, but in fact, noise was generated, and it seems that there were rules such as not playing in the corridor among residents.
And as you can see from the picture below, the entrance door is a sliding door. These efforts were made to avoid hitting passers-by in the corridor when the door was opened.

Initially, a shared telephone was installed in the corridor, and the telephone operator received the telephone, sounded a buzzer in the dwelling unit, and when residents picked up the receiver in the corridor, it was connected.

In addition to the balcony, there were two living rooms, kitchens, bathrooms, and washrooms in the dwelling units.
Right after entering the entrance is the bathroom and bath.
It was designed so that even if the children came back with mud, they could wash them immediately before going to the room in the back.
Even in today's apartments and condominiums, the fact that there are restrooms and baths near the entrance may be similar.

There is a window at the top of the washroom, but if you are tall, you will see the inside of the washroom from the corridor.
For this reason, the residents at that time were taking measures by sticking paper etc. from the inside so that they would not be seen from the outside.

I've been looking at the residents, rents and rooms of Harumi High-rise apartments so far, how was it?
I think there are various ways of feeling, such as those who seem nostalgic and those who have just discovered new things.
And I guess there was a little glimpse of the ideas and difficulties of the designers and architects, and the ideas of the residents.
In the middle part, we will mainly introduce elevators.