Umbrella House – one of the milestones of twentieth-century Japanese architecture, built in 1961 and designed by Kazuo Shinohara – risked demolishing. As soon as she heard the news, however, Kazuyo Sejima, from SANAA, contacted the president of Vitra, Rolf Fehlbaum, who made possible the dismantling of the small single-family house and its reconstruction within the Vitra Campus.

Initially built in Tokyo, in the Nerima district, the tiny house – only 592 square feet – is the last existing project among the works belonging to Shinohara’s “First style”. While returning to some characteristics of the Japanese tradition – as in the case of the roof, which mentions those of Buddhist temples; or the wooden structure, with traditional sliding walls – Shinohara declared that he wanted to give life to an architecture able to adapt to contemporary living conditions, without falling into useless nostalgia.