DAYS_

Mitsutoshi&Tomoko Takesue

Turn at that corner! 3

In the meanwhile, the land readjustment works started as we were told before. The Nishitetsu Ohashi station was moved, and the new one opened almost in front of my house. My house was originally built in the middle of the fields as a one-story house, and my family lived in for about fifteen years, but suddenly a train station was in front of us, and like all the neighbourhood, also our house was rebuilt as a multi-story building. Actually, at the time I was in Tokyo, when I was living on bread crusts, I received a phone call from my father: “Our house is going to be rebuilt as a multi-story building, do you want to take care of it?”. “Yes, I do” was my answer. So, like the prodigal son, I went back home.
I have always been interested in interior design. In the meantime, I was making a scrapbook of pictures cut from a special issue of BRUTUS about “loft style” in New York, and gathering and passionately reading western books about “French style” or “Santa Fe style”, popular at that time. Lofts with high ceilings, French style antique furniture, the indigenous taste of Santa Fe style: probably I had already reached the image that now can be found in my shop Organ. But I knew nothing about the fundamentals of architecture. I was just attracted to the Bauhaus style, so I decided for a simple concrete building.
So, I ended up designing the building by myself, and there was one thing I really wanted to realize: a space where living with shoes on. Probably because I was fascinated by that scene in “Breathless”, where Jean-Paul Belmondo plays an anarchist hero, who, lying on the bed with shoes on and a cigarette in his mouth, seduces Jean Seberg. I was aiming at a western style interior, and I didn’t want that the result was just “something like”. I didn’t want shoe racks or slippers, my ideal was a living space like hotels or hospitals, where anybody can enter the rooms without taking off the shoes. After all, life is a short trip, we should make it real.
(Mitsutoshi Takesue)
IMG_0607

SHARE :