but by 10 small staggering levels, each with its own purpose and all connected by a floating “step-plate hung on steel rods” staircase; thus the primary functions of this house are allocated to these ‘landings’. The staircase also divides the house lengthwise into two areas. The furniture and fixtures are carefully aligned to the areas at the rear, leaving the other side “clear, flexible and without built-in installations.” Despite the apparent ‘individuality’ of the building, the oversized front window “resonates with the scale of the cityscape outside”, while having a conversation with an adjacent neighbour's arched roof. Ako House Ako House is located in a dense residential district zone, Setagaya, Tokyo. It is a three-storey residential building and with total site area of 51.26m2. It took 7 months to design the house with 5 months of construction. The structure/ construction method of the house is wooden. Ako house is an example of a building ‘behaviour’ in increasingly fragmented high-density residential districts. Due to the constrained nature of the site area, the volume of the house had to expand vertically thus creating a strong vertical circulation. Atelier bow-wow's design objective for this house was “to ensure the maximum capacity that can be placed on the site, while discovering new behaviours within density and within a state of vertical expansion. The location of the site is a corner lot with a sliced off corner. Reflecting this particular characteristic of the site into its design, the facade of the house is divided into five segments of equal length with slightly shifted angles. Each wall has few windows placed to allow views connecting out to the nearby trees and sloping street. The interior of the house has a clear composition with the staircase placed at the centre of the house. Each level of the floors is strongly distinguished by its own characteristic. However the downside of this predominant the staircase is that it sometimes creates predominant visual distraction. Atelier bow-wow attempted to solve this problem by obscuring the stair as much as possible. “We created slit-levels to lower the vertical intervals between floors and to shorten each stairway.” Black Dog House Built in 2004 in Karuizawa-cho, Nagan, the Black Dog House, is a domestic residence which can be seen as fairly conventional as compared to some of their other projects. However, like many of their other works, the Black Dog House is an intriguing