Japanese studio Ryuichi Ashizawa Architects has attached an egg-shaped tomb to an "unconventional" house in the city of Sakai, Osaka prefecture.
Challenging the idea that tombs are built only for emperors and powerful people, with this project, the architects aimed to explore if they could create such a structure within the premises of a regular house.
as a result of investigation by Ryuichi Ashizawa Architects, it turned out that creating a cemetery in a residential area is legally prohibited. The present housing design seems to face ‘life’ but not ‘death’, meaning that rooms are planned based on functions, on lively activities of residents, and it is difficult to plan blank spaces that do not want specific function. Normally, the typical place in the house referring to the dead is the altar, however the architect thought that he would like to create a house that is unconventional, containing a space that feels dark, and symbolizing death.