🇯🇵Japan·Private home, not open to visitors

Iwasa House (岩佐邸)

Ashiya, Hyōgo Prefecture

Sources checked October 2026

“A two-phase house unified by an enveloping curved wall lit from above, with a buried bedroom added to the south.”

Year: 1984
Architect: Tadao Ando
Type: Reinforced-concrete private house
Access: Private residence, not open to visitors

This reinforced-concrete house in Ashiya, designed by Tadao Ando, was built in two phases, from 1982 to 1984 and from 1989 to 1990. Its main gesture is an enveloping curved wall, lit from above, which links the whole. The second phase added a buried bedroom, facing a second curved wall.

A private, lived-in home: it is not open to visitors. It is placed without an address, from a public source, at neighbourhood or city level.

In depth ≈ 1 min read

History

The house came about in two stages: the original dwelling (1982-1984), then an extension (1989-1990). Through the second phase, Tadao Ando unified the whole while making the two parts of the house contrast with each other.

Architecture

The main gesture is an enveloping curved wall, lit from above, which ties the whole house together in space.

The first phase is a rectangular building measuring 5.40 m by 27.40 m, on two levels. A curved wall there encloses a void that relates all the rooms of the house to one another. The south side of the volume opens to the outside; to the north, the curved wall closes off an interior space. The study and the bedrooms take up the ground floor; the dining room, the living room and other rooms are upstairs. A staircase set in the south void climbs to the terrace.

The second phase added a buried bedroom to the south of the original building, edged by a second curved wall that faces the first. The house is built of reinforced concrete.

Ashiya, Hyōgo Prefecture