The sixteen apartments have identical layouts in plan, yet every one has a differently shaped elevation that has been designed to create the best lighting and views for each precise location.

This means room heights, window positions and roof pitches vary for both blocks, while some of the top floor residences feature suspended ceilings that zigzag up and down.

Both buildings are entirely clad in light blue coated steel and all sixteen apartments have minimal white interiors.

See more architecture and interiors from Japan here.

Photography is by Ippei Shinzawa.

Here’s some more text from the architects:

Ridge

About the concept of an apartment that was built in Takasaki city, Gunma.

Gunma is the car society and, a car ownership rate per person of Gunma is the highest in Japan.

The transportation by car expands a sphere of life, and this is special locality of Gunma.

Usually, a context of creating architectures is quoted from a neighborhood and small area where we can go on foot.

However, I quote a context from a wider range in this case and, design it by a macro scale of the scenery.

Plan of every dwelling unit is almost the same but section is not same at all.

I designed the section of every dwelling unit carefully from the every situation – position of the room, line of sight from a peripheral road, and roof shape.

As a result, shape of windows and undulation of ceilings is each different.

Those things and difference in floor level control line of sight and light.

A shadow provides density of light and shade for the place.

Every ridge such as ream of slant roof, undulation of ceiling show the new form of the apartment in this area that is able to link the sense of the resident to “wide neighborhood” that is a local characteristic of Gunma.

Clerkenwell Design Week 2012: Vienna designers Mischer’Traxler present a basket-making machine that stops working when nobody’s looking at Clerkenwell Design Week in London this week.

When sensors in the framework detect the presence of one person, a strip of oak veneer is drawn through a basin of glue and wound round into a basket.

If a second person is detected, colour will be applied to the veneer by a marker pen.

More spectators cause it to add more colour, so the resulting object becomes a record of how much interest was generated at different times during its production.

Called Collective Works, the machine only works while it holds the attention of its audience and if spectators completely lose interest, the piece will never be completed.

The project was initially developed for the W-hotels designer of the Future award exhibition at Design Miami/Basel 2011 – see our earlier story.

Clerkenwell Design Week takes place from 22-24 May and includes our latest Dezeen Watch Store pop-up at the main venue at the Farmiloe Building, 34 St John Street until 9pm tonight – more details here.

See all our stories about Mischer’Traxler »
See all our stories about Clerkenwell Design Week 2012 »

Here’s some more information from the designers:

‘Collective works’ is a production process which is just fully functioning when people pay attention to the producing machine. Reacting to its audience, the process translates the flow of people into an object. The resulting outcome varies in colour and size just like the level of interest is varying during the time of production.

As soon as one person is coming close and looks at the machine, the production process is started: A wooden 24mm wide veneer-strip is pulled through a glue basin and slowly coiled up around a 20mm thick wooden base. Since the turning platform with the base moves downwards the veneer strip slowly builds up a basket. A mould is not needed since the material supports itself and does not collapse when being coiled up. As soon as somebody else joins to look at the process, colour is added via a marker onto the veneer.

The interaction is possible due to sensors in the frame of the machine. If one sensor is activated/one person is watching, the machine starts winding. When two are activated, the marker with a light tone colour is pressed to the veneer to colour it. The third person results in one more marker with a gradiently darker colour. This goes up to four markers at the same time staining the veneer-strip black.

Depending on the overall interaction time the baskets’ height is defined. The more often somebody stops by to watch the process the higher the outcome gets.

The machine directly reacts to each observer and thus the outcome is as well directly depending on the audience. Every spectator leaves a mark on the object and therefore each basket becomes an unique record of the people’s interest in the object’s production. A basket – a vessel used to collect something, becomes a collection of data by itself. If nobody is interested in the project, it stops producing at all and the final object just does not get made. This can be seen as ‘production on interest’.

‘Collective works’ also questions the relation between man and machine. The audience is turned into workers even though their effort is basically just their time they spend with the machine – but time is what most of us lack. Somehow. Normally many machines in factories just need some technician to monitor the production and suddenly one machine needs some audience to produce colourful outcomes.

The latest issue of our Dezeen Mail newsletter is out now and leads with a concrete house with a faceted facade like a rock face, which readers would rather see applied to a nightclub or church.

As always, this Dezen Mail includes the latest jobs, music, movies, stories and comments from the past week on Dezeen. Read Dezeen Mail issue 102 »

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This Tokyo house by Japanese studio Naf Architect & Design has a climbing wall and ladders, in case the owners get bored of using the stairs.

The seven-metre climbing wall is positioned in a courtyard at the centre of the house and leads up to rooms on the first floor, then on to a roof terrace hidden behind a two-metre-high parapet.

Ladders and staircases also connect the two floors, which together accommodate bedrooms and living spaces for a family of four.

We’re noticing a trend for climbing walls in Japanese houses – see another one here.

Photography is by Toshiyuki Yano.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

3way House

A house which has three means of vertical transportation; climbing wall, ladders and stairs. The house is located in a residential area where old and new buildings stand intermingled and buildings are rebuilt to be taller than 7 meters high, as the vicinity has become “district where minimum limit of the building height is 7 meters above ground.”

The client is a family of a couple and two children, and they wanted a traditional wooden house from the start. The structure of the building is a traditional two-storey wooden house with deck roof whose rooftop is surrounded by two-meter parapet to satisfy the regulation of minimum height of the district. The rooftop is like a room without ceiling surrounded by two-meter wall.

We’ve given three means of vertical transportation to this building of three layers; first floor, second floor and rooftop. The climbing wall leads from porch to the rooftop via courtyard; ladders go up from living room through an opening to hobby room; stairs start from kitchen to sun room where laundry is hung. These vertical paths of flow are also passages of sunlight and air, which contribute to creating a sunny and airy indoor environment. Up on the rooftop, roofs of neighbours can be seen stretching far. As the renovation of the vicinity goes on, the view from the rooftop will change with growing number of rooftops.

When we are on the ground, it is hard to realize the relations with neighbours up on the rooftop. We aimed to create versatile living space which allows more opportunities to socialize with neighbours while multiplying family pleasure by closely connecting the ground and rooftop with three means of transportation.

Name of the Project: 3way House
Location: Adach ward, Tokyo
Category: detached house
Zoning use district: -
Fire protection specification: -
Structure: Wood construction
Number of stories: 2 stories above ground

Maximum height: 7.699 m
Maximum eave height: 5.655 m
Frontal road: 4.00m on the south / 6.00m on the east
Site area: 63.47m2
Building area: 44.41m2
Total floor area: 90.71m2
Completion: September 17, 2010
Architect: Akio NAKASA(director)

French architects Djuric Tardio have designed a wooden tipi that could be mass-produced to provide miniature nurseries in the parks of Paris.

A screen of sticks would surround the three circular floors of each one, giving the structure its conical form.

Reception and kitchen facilities would be located on the lowest floor, while teaching and activity spaces for up to 12 children would occupy the middle floor and a terrace would be positioned above.

The architects intend for each nursery to be cheap to manufacture and quick to assemble.

See more stories about kindergartens on Dezeen here, including one with a curving concrete orifice.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

STICKS is a concept of temporary micro-nurseries concept in series for 12 children.

The idea come from the growing necessity of places in the childhood’s building in Paris and urban areas.

Completely built in wood, with natural materials, without harmful emissions substances. They are equipped with the latest technologies in sustainable and bioclimatic development. This nursery was also designed to be mass produced and low-cost.

The conception was thought to by-pass the classic and complex decisional process. It means that the financial and technical logic is “Keys in hand”. The temporary licence of 6years, allows avoiding the statutory fates which can restrain this type of project.

From a simple socio-urban analysis, it’s possible to notice that gardens and public parks in Paris are placed uniformly in the intramuros and are opened in regular time slots, with curves of influx which are exactly complementary with the nurseries functioning.

For that purpose, it was imagined to install Sticks in unused spaces inside the gardens and public parks of the city, such as traffic circle or residual spaces.

The nursery-kiosk will be settled in a short time because the mass construction wood, made in studio, allows a clean and fast construction site, with very few reversible adaptations of the site.

Kids will enjoy these green spaces in the off-speak hours of public influx and they are close to home.

STICKS is an intelligent system to respond quickly at the demand of places in nursery and they allow children to enjoy the qualitative and unused environment during the day.