The city of Nagoya dates back to early 17th-century feudal Japan, when the famous shogun Tokugawa built the Nagoya Castle. Since then, the city has grown to become the industrial heart of the country with automobile, aviation, high-tech, and other corporations headquartered here. At the same time, Nagoya is surrounded by hundreds of square miles of farmland, thus maintaining a small-town hospitality amidst big-city cultural amenities. This is only enhanced by Nagoya’s position in the geographic center of Japan, which has helped the city incorporate a diverse array of regional cultures and traditions. Kabuki, the traditional Japanese drama, has a long history here, and the city has long been known for its artful fabrics and ceramics.

Because an overwhelming majority of Nagoya’s buildings were destroyed during World War II, the city’s urban fabric is decidedly mid-century, with both positive and ill-fated results. Planning-wise, however, modern Nagoya has successfully added wide boulevards and an easily navigable street grid. And since its hosting of the 1989 World Design Expo, the city has increasingly become known for architecture, with famous names like Tadao Ando, Yoshio Taniguchi, and Fumihiko Maki designing buildings here.

It is an American-born Nagoya architect, however, whose work first caught the eye of Yuji Otakeyama, a local trucking company president who was looking for a second home and office nearer to Nagoya’s city center. The M/F House, a crisp and contemporary nine-unit apartment complex designed by Michel Weenick and his firm, Architecture W, represents a new trend in Japan toward higher-end rental properties. For decades after the war, Japanese developers dictated the composition of rental apartment buildings, which were largely banal and utilitarian. But after ten years of economic doldrums, a new generation is looking more than ever to rent instead of buy, and good design no longer must be accompanied by a mortgage.

Dwell spoke with Otakeyama and Weenick about the M/F House and Otakeyama’s experience of living there.

The M/F House is a modern building in an old, not-so-desirable inner-city neighborhood. How has it fared?

Weenick: When we were asked to come up with a concept for the site, we realized that its location was more convenient for more people than the developers were giving it credit for. We thought if we could do something more downtown-ish, something with a little bit more style to it, then people would pay to live there. And that turned out to be true. It was full from the day it opened, and when somebody moves out there are people waiting to move in.

What’s the best part about living in this apartment?

Otakeyama: I like the combination of spiral stairs and two-story space on the south side of my apartment. There is a feeling of connection between the two floors and yet both are independent spaces. I also love how the light shines through the spiral stairs from above at night. This place gets much more sunlight than normal apartments.

Along with glass, the other primary material in the building is concrete. That’s very much in keeping with the work of great Japanese architects like Ando, but what’s it like to live with every day?

Otakeyama: I appreciate the starkness of the concrete walls. I can put any of my stuff in the apartment without having to worry if it fits or not. All the apartments I had lived in previously were so standardized that I was pretty excited about the chance to live in an interior space that was different. After I started living at M/F, I began to think, more than ever, that uniqueness of design is really important. All of my friends tell me how unique and cool the place is. And I’m surrounded only by things that I like: my pachinko machines and my miniature car and toy collections. I can do whatever I want inside because it’s such a simple space to relax and live in.

From the front this is a relatively bulky building, but it appears very nimble because of how the second and third floors are cantilevered over the first. Was that by accident or by design?

Weenick: I’ve had a growing interest in cantilevers, mainly out of disgust and frustration with the standard Japanese way of designing things. Usually you can see all four corners go straight down to the ground, which seems a more sturdy way to meet Japan’s rigid seismic codes. But it doesn’t always have to be that way. I’ve long been trying to get my architecture to be a little bit more dynamic and show a little bit more movement. And luckily there was good reason for the cantilevering here. Because it’s a rental apartment building, you can’t ignore the economics. By splitting the top two floors, it created a central space in back that was open to the sky. That way the back units were able to get that ideal southern exposure.

What do you think of the neighborhood?

Otakeyama: I like the Nakamura area because it’s close to Nagoya Station and Sakae, the central part of Nagoya. It’s convenient to get around. And unlike other centrally located neighborhoods, it’s fairly quiet.

Is there untapped potential for the central part of the city?

Otakeyama: Yes, I think so. It’s just that people in Nagoya still don’t know how to bring out the city’s potential. But the ongoing Expo 2005 Aichi [a world exposition on sustainability] may help accelerate that.

Nagoya was one of the most important “castle towns” in Japan from the 15th century on. The Nagoya Castle is one of the best spots to learn about this history.
www.japan-guide.com/e/e3300.html

Atsuta, one of the most important Shinto shrines, is situated in a wooded park in southern Nagoya. The shrine was remod-eled after the Ise shrines in the Japanese Shinmei-zukuri architecture style.
www.atsutajingu.or.jp

Nagoya’s premier art museum was designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, who is also responsible for New York’s new Museum of Modern Art. You can see some of the same architectural exploration in the Nagoya museum, with a poetically simple series of floating walls and layering planes.
www.museum.toyota.aichi.jp

Nagoya’s signature company is Toyota, and the museum bearing its name is home not just to Camrys and Corollas. There is a vast collection of historic European, American, and Japanese cars, too.
www.toyota.co.jp/Museum

Located just south of Sakae and Fushimi, Nagoya’s main shopping centers, is Nagoya’s oldest temple, Osu Kannon. The surrounding area is home to a vibrant fusion of old-style arcades selling everything from discount electronics to secondhand kimonos.
www.ohsu.co.jp/kan_e.html

Designed by Antonin Raymond, a Frank Lloyd Wright disciple who came to Japan to work on Wright’s landmark Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, the Nanzan University campus brought some of the first modern Western architecture to Nagoya in the mid-1960s.
www.nanzan-u.ac.jp

Holdings include art, books, and treasures from one of Japan’s last shoguns. The grounds were renovated in the late 1980s and there’s an extensive shogun museum there.
www.cjn.or.jp/tokugawa