How Suspended Elements Lighten This 40sqm/430sqft Tokyo Apartment

Designed for a daughter returning to her childhood home to care for her ageing parents who live upstairs, the ground floor was entirely her own to reimagine. By removing the walls between two closed-off rooms at the end of the house, the space was opened up to light from three sides and the Japanese-style garden beyond.

One of the project's defining influences, the client's parents founded Arakawa Giken Kogyo, a Japanese wire systems company featured throughout the apartment. Shelves, partitions and cabinetry are suspended using these wire systems rather than fixed to walls, keeping everything light, adjustable and visually lifted. Triangles, trapezoids and curved edges softly mark zone changes, while subtle floor-level shifts define living and sleeping areas.

Below, we highlight five design details that make this compact Tokyo apartment feel calm, flexible and quietly spacious.

1. Floating Wire-Suspended Timber Joinery 
‍2. A Stainless Steel Kitchen That Reflects Light
‍3. Shoji Screens That Divide and Brighten
‍4. A Rounded Shelf That Softens the Kitchen
‍5. A Raised Sleeping Platform That Shifts the Mood

1. Floating Wire-Suspended Timber Joinery 

Throughout the home, shelves, cabinetry and even partitions are suspended using the family’s wire systems, helping elements to hover lightly and hang within the space. The wire’s adjustable nature also allows for flexibility depending on use. Balancing wire with softer materials, a kitchen cupboard is held up in part by a timber offcut taken from a tree once growing on the property – a quiet nod to the property's past, sitting warmly alongside the hard lines of the wire system.

2. A Stainless Steel Kitchen That Reflects Light

Quietly tucked into one of the apartment’s corners is the kitchen’s compact stainless steel unit. Simple, practical and easy to maintain, the stainless steel was also chosen for its reflective quality, allowing warmth and light to reflect into the apartment throughout the day. In place of a conventional splashback, triangular stainless steel panels also wrap the kitchen’s surrounding walls, adding both to the reflective quality and the apartment’s wider design language and feel.

3. Shoji Screens That Divide and Brighten

Featured throughout the space, shoji screens act as both subtle partitions and design details. In the apartment’s entrance, a custom shoji screen door marks the transition from the family home into the private space beyond, while also allowing light to filter through the translucent paper. Moving further into the apartment, a second shoji screen suspended by wires that floats between the living and sleeping area, neatly conceales the bed from view without closing off the space entirely, helping the apartment feel open while maintaining a sense of privacy.

4. A Rounded Shelf That Softens the Kitchen

Above the stainless steel kitchen hangs a large circular suspended shelf – its curves a deliberate counterpoint to the surrounding angular geometry. Hung with the same wire system throughout the home, the shelf sits weightlessly above the bench while integrated lighting underneath casts a glow across the stainless steel surfaces below. Functional for storage, ambient as a light source and quietly making the hard-edged kitchen feel warmer.

5. A Raised Sleeping Platform That Shifts the Mood
 

Behind the shoji partition and up a single step is the bedroom – a quieter, more intimate space within the otherwise open-plan layout. Finished in carpet with rounded edges, simply stepping up marks a new zone within the apartment, without the need for a wall or door. The sleeping side of the partition – clad in deep blue tiles – deepens the sense of calm and enclosure. For storage, a full-length wardrobe spans the wall, with upper shelves suspended once more from the ceiling by wire. Curtains conceal the clothes within, illuminated by indirect lighting, casting a diffused glow that draws the bedroom inward, to rest, at the end of the day.

Rather than relying on fixed elements or heavy partitions, Swaying Room hangs its openness, light and flexibility on suspended joinery, translucent screens and subtle level changes to create a new, yet familiar home within a home.

Scroll on to explore more images by Shinya Kigure and see how light, geometry and suspended elements come together throughout the apartment.