AKASAKA BOUNDS Apartment: A Honeymoon-Inspired Sanctuary in the Heart of Tokyo

The AKASAKA BOUNDS Apartment by Studio KOM reimagines compact Tokyo living through an intimate blend of emotional storytelling, refined materiality, and spatial innovation. Located in Minato City and spanning 54 m², the 2024 renovation transforms a typical urban unit into a home inspired by the newlywed couple's shared journeys, personal histories, and the delicate balance between two merging lifestyles.

Photographed by Akira Nakamura, the project showcases a warm, atmospheric environment where architecture becomes a means of capturing ephemeral beauty: those fleeting moments of connection, discovery, and quiet solitude that define early married life.

A Home Shaped by Two Life Paths

The design narrative begins with the idea of newlyweds learning to embrace each other’s distinct pasts. Studio KOM describes this as a “once-in-a-lifetime encounter,” filled with refreshing contrasts and subtle nostalgia. This emotional foundation becomes the conceptual framework for the space, shaping everything from the circulation to the material palette.

To reflect the couple’s honeymoon memories in New Zealand and Australia, the theme for the home became “an endless stay at the most prestigious hotel.” The apartment was envisioned as a serene retreat where the natural landscapes, colors, and tactile sensations from their travels translate into a calm yet richly layered interior experience.

Celebrating the Existing Structure Through Spatial Editing

The apartment sits within a rigid RC frame of 5.4m × 6.3m units. Studio KOM strategically removed the floor across half a span from the entrance, creating a floating, corridor-like approach that immediately sets a luxurious tone rarely found in compact Tokyo apartments. On the opposite side, a semi-indoor balcony extending 2.7m × 3.1m becomes a private oasis, offering soft daylight and a visual extension of the interior.

These opposing elements, the entry approach and the balcony, function as architectural devices that buffer the home from Tokyo’s intensity. They create an experiential threshold where the city’s bustle dissolves into a refined, intimate environment.

The Entrance as an ON-OFF Boundary

One of the project’s standout ideas is the redefinition of the entrance hall as an “ON-OFF border.” With existing ductwork hugging the wall and a constrained ceiling height of 1900 mm under a large beam, Studio KOM inserted a washbasin beneath the beam like a symbolic gateway.

This gesture serves several purposes:

• A ritual cleansing point when returning home from the city
• A transition zone between public and private realms
• A visual cue hinting toward the bright southern balcony

By turning an architectural constraint into a feature, the designers crafted an entry experience that is both symbolic and functional.

A Continuous Axis: Kitchen, Workspace, and Light

The kitchen and workspace are arranged along a single wall that visually and spatially connects the entrance to the balcony, forming a dynamic daily-use axis. Their adjacency encourages fluid movement and interaction, ideal for a young couple navigating life together.

A key design inspiration came from Lake Erskine in New Zealand, whose shimmering surface is reinterpreted through wet extruded tiles. Composed of rough chamotte soil mixed with metallic powders, these tiles produce shifting reflections, allowing natural light to dance across surfaces throughout the day.

This creates a poetic sequence of illumination: morning light glides from the balcony, travels along the tile-clad wall, and reaches the entrance gate like a gentle visual guide.

Materiality, Craft, and Meaning

Manufacturers such as Cocentino, KSAG, Pacific Textile, Tajima, and Timber Crew contributed materials that enhance the apartment’s tactile richness. Rough textures meet smooth finishes, soft textiles balance structural elements, and handcrafted details evoke the couple’s shared memories of nature and travel.

This thoughtful palette mirrors the deeper narrative of the project: two distinct lives merging, negotiating boundaries, and forming a harmonious whole.

A Home Named for Its Concept: “Bounds”

For Studio KOM’s Keisuke Okamoto and Maria, architecture and interior design operate with different values yet overlap meaningfully in this project. As the couple’s first shared home and their first collaborative life project, the apartment becomes a living framework for future growth.

All photographs are works of Akira Nakamura