Official

As I mentioned a little in the first part, this apartment is a mega-structuring method that uses three-story and six dwelling units as one unit.
(This method will be introduced in detail in Part 2.)
In addition, the skipping access method was adopted to reduce costs, so the elevators in this apartment do not stop on each floor.
The 1st, 3rd, 6th, and 9th floors.
In other words, residents on the 5th floor take an elevator up to the 6th floor and go down to the 5th floor by stairs.

It may be a little hard until you get used to it.
As shown in the photo below, I am convinced that a guide map showing how to get to each dwelling unit was installed for first visitors.

The one who guided us around the history museum gave us an example of how complicated the structure was.
That's when a resident on the 7th floor wants to put a noise complaint to a resident directly above (8th floor).
Since it has a three-layer structure of 2-4, 5-7, 8-10, it cannot climb directly from the 7th floor to the 8th floor.
So, from the 7th floor, go down to the 6th floor by stairs, and go through the corridor on the 6th floor to the elevator platform.
I had to go up to the 9th floor by elevator and go down to the 8th floor through the corridor on the 9th floor by stairs.
The corridor is about 100m from end to end, so if the noise source lives in a dwelling unit away from the elevator, it seems that you will lose the willingness to complain on the way.

This is the elevator used at that time.
The basket and the left and right frames of the entrance are as they were at the time, and the wall and the upper frame of the entrance are reproduced based on the materials.
I don't move now, but I was able to actually ride and remember the remnants of those days.

In terms of size, the size is as small as the elevator used in buildings with old seasons even today.
According to the explanation installed on the wall, unmanned elevators installed in high-rise houses were rare at that time, and there was a time when telephone operators operated only during the daytime for unfamiliar residents.
Construction of high-rise houses with elevators will begin in earnest after 1965, and basic research was conducted with this elevator.

Although it is such an inconvenient skip access method, it also had advantages such as increasing the proportion of dwelling units with windows on both north and south sides (non-corridor floor dwelling units).

However, residents on the second floor commented that it was difficult to get to the room that could be seen up close from the ground floor, so later, seven circular stairs were set up that could directly access the second floor.

(A model of Harumi high-rise apartment produced by a student at Tokyo University of Science for the 100th Birthday Kunio Maekawa Architecture Exhibition, 1/100 scale)

This spiral staircase, which is piled up of blocks, is very precise, and when it was relocated and restored, it was somehow shaped by combining the good things of the seven.
As I will write in Part 2, this apartment house history museum will soon move to Akabadai, Kita-ku. Along with that, the circular stairs should be tried again....

According to the person who guided me, the height of the circular stairs may be half this at the relocation destination, and it is only now that you can see the condition at that time up close.

The connection with the second floor is like this.

I feel like you can see how convenient this staircase, which can be accessed directly without using an elevator.

Last but not least, the rent differs between the floor where the elevator stops (with corridors) and the floor where the elevator stops (without corridors).
According to modern thinking, I think that the floor where the stop floor is more convenient and the rent is higher, but at that time the rent is higher on the floor where the noise of the elevator is low and there is no corridor so that a large floor plan can be secured That's right.
At that time, there weren't many high-rise buildings yet, and interest in post-war life, such as how much view was enjoyed from each floor, increased.

In the second part, we will introduce the "mega-structuring method", which appeared several times in the first part and the middle part, as well as other accessories that were interested in during the tour.