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NW House: Real Estate with Style

by John McGee

The NW House Bldg, designed by Kunishiko Hayakawa in 1986 (Photos: John McGee)

Looking for an apartment in Tokyo sucks. If you want a ¥1-million-yen-a-month rental or a walk-in closet facing a brick wall, no problem. Anything else requires professional help. There are approximately ten fudosan (real estate offices) for every available property. It's a pack of wolves chasing one scrawny rat—one of them will catch it, but which one? 

Last summer, Gallery NW House in Waseda turned into a real estate office. Believe it or not, Tokyo needs this fudosan—it specializes in architect-designed properties. 

Kazuko Endo started NW House ("NW" refers to new, north-west Tokyo, and Nishi Waseda, its address) 15 years ago as a contemporary art gallery where she built a reputation for showing young contemporary Japanese artists. For example, she was the first to show photographer Yasumasa Morimura and also helped popularize the landscape photography of Naoya Hatakeyama, who represented Japan in the 2001 Venice Biennale.

Kazuko Endo, founder of NW House

For NW House's real estate enterprise though, Endo has passed the reins to the new head, Shigeru Kimura. Kimura, who speaks fluent English, has been with NW House almost since its beginning—he used to volunteer at the gallery while a law student at nearby Waseda University. 

Kimura says the continuing weak economy that forced NW House out of the gallery business about a year ago is also driving down housing and land prices in central Tokyo. As a result, many of those who fled to the more affordable suburbs in the late 1980s are now finding it possible to move back to the city center. And they are expecting more. New tower block condominiums currently under construction tend to be larger, and some have been designed by prominent architects—Terence Conran for the Roppongi 6-chome project and Kengo Kuma for Mitsui's Park Court development in Yotsuya, for example.

But Kimura credits the architect-designed apartment trend to the smaller projects by designer/developers Alpha Planner in Roppongi, its offshoot, Takagi Planning Office in Harajuku, and Linea Development in Minami-Aoyama. Their buildings around Nakano/Higashi Nakano, Shibaura and Waseda—the ones that NW House wants to help discriminating urbanites find—prove that small can be livable, comfortable and cool. 

NW House is a real estate office with style 

Rentals are just one side of NW House's specialty business. It also finds lots and the right architect for prospective homeowners. It finds rooms for people interested in renovating older buildings. And NW House is also negotiating for in-fill projects—it wants to readapt disused factories, warehouses, and older buildings around Waseda, turning them into lofts and other living spaces (Kimura's also working on a book to help challenge the outmoded stigma of old buildings—to repackage old as good). 

Kimura and Endo are still constructing their business model and finding their market. With renovations, for example, Kimura notes that though there are already many potential renters, there aren't many willing landlords. For her part, Endo continues to deal art from NW House, but on a smaller scale—a Hideka Nakazawa painting and a Hatakeyama "Limeworks" series photo hang in the office. This art and architecture team may not single handedly solve Tokyo apartment hunters' woes, but the new focus of NW House does herald a positive trend.

This article was originally published in 2002 in Tokyo, Japan. At that time, NW House was at Nishi-Waseda 1-3-7, Shinjuku-ku. Mon-Sat 10am-7pm. Tel: 03-3204-6227. Nearest stn: Waseda (Tozai line).

©2007 John McGee

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