ON design partners: Fika

Japanese studio ON design partners has completed Fika, a house and Scandinavian sundries store in Tokyo's Nagasaki neighbourhood. The three-storey house shares a single wall — transformed into a display shelf — with the store, where a myriad small items are placed as a precious collection of objects, rather than a typical product display.

Costumers can enter the store and browse the shelves, where products for sale are placed alongside objects used in the daily life of the house. The minimal store interior features a high ceiling and a floor to ceiling window, allowing for light to enter both the store and the house, and for passersby to admire the artistic object display.

Inside the house, life takes place in three different floors, with living spaces in the first and second floors, and private spaces at the basement level. "When a washed teacup is placed on the shelf," state architects Osamu Nishida, Hirotaka Isshiki and Rie Yanai, "it becomes a marketable product."

Located at the corner of a 35 square metre lot, the building's minute proportions add to its charm, tying together the concepts of display and the spectacle of everyday life through its main window. "By displaying commercial products and products that the owner uses in a daily life together on the shelf," state the architects, "the shop and the house become linked to each other, connecting with the neighborhood through life."

ON design partners: Fika house and store
Architects: ON design partners
Team: Osamu Nishida, Hirotaka Isshiki, Rie Yanai
Location: Nagasaki, Toshima-ku, Tokyo
Structure: wood; 1 basement level, 2 floors
Site area: 35,66 square metres
Building area: 22,04 square metres
Total floor area: 58,58 square metres
Structure: Ryuji Tabata/ASD
Construction: Ohara Komusho