Traditional thinking says you have to be someone really important to warrant a tomb, you know a king, emperor or a powerful family. In Osaka, Japan, a contemporary family has defied convention by adding an egg-shaped tomb-like space to their private residence. Striking yes, contemplative too but the space also functions as a connector between the first and second floors. In fact, the internal staircase is the only way to get between floors. The view from the tomb’s second level reveals a traditional Japanese interior with wooden walls and shoji sliding doors. The second floor contains two bedrooms while the kitchen and living room are on the first. The tomb also includes two smaller domes, one for a laundry and one for the bathroom.
The house is framed in wood but building the dome was problematic. It was too expensive to use curved laminated wood so the top of the tomb was constructed using short, straight wooden members sandwiched between plywood and arranged radially. It was then covered in soil and plastered.
We don’t know much about the residents or what motivated them – the egg-shaped sphere is more of a feature than a resting place for a corpse. There’s no corpse inside – but the builders, Ryuichi Ashizawa Architect & Associates are no strangers to religious structures. Their Setra Chapel in Kobe won a Religious Art and Architecture Award from Form & Faith magazine in 2006 and although not as massive as their commercial commission, the Osaka house is equally commanding.
The egg-shape tomb gives the structure a distinctive profile at odds (but interestingly so) from the rest of the conventional, rectangular house. It also offers an emotional escape from everyday routine. Being enveloped in a womb-like interior is a calming influence and suggests a connection to a life force – and death too if you think about completing the cycle. That’s quite a statement for such a small property.
