Tower House

Tower House

Tower House is an experimental documentary about a house of the same name in Tokyo, built by Takamitsu Azuma in 1966. The Tower House was erected on a 20-square-meter plot of land and from the moment of its creation it was regarded as a symbol of living in a modern metropolis´ center.

Designed as a continual vertical room for the architect´s own family, the staircase appears as the most significant structure in the house´s interior. It connects the individual rooms, which are "piled" one on top of the other without any doors separating them.

The film builds on this concept of the connecting staircase: the stairs thus become directing elements. Beginning at street level and spiraling upwards, the specially-adapted camera captures panorama shots from one step to the next, right up to the top floor. In one uninterrupted, spiraling motion, the viewer is given a complete look at the building, its bare concrete walls as well as the living spaces all along the way up to the top, ending in a view of the city from the uppermost window.

This visual explanation of the house´s inner structure is complemented by an audio "tour" on the sound level: the house´s inhabitant, the architect´s daughter, comments on the building itself and her life within. Simultaneous to the camera´s step-by-step and floor-to-floor progression, the protagonist´s story develops while reminiscing about her childhood and reflecting upon her present life in the Tower House.

Not only is Tower House a portrait of this fascinating building, but by interlinking features of space and history it also deals with the urban and social changes that Japan has undergone in the last few decades.

(Karl-Heinz Klopf)