The staircase that was meant to be the face

This building is two streets south of the buried train tracks in Shimokitazawa. Concrete block, three floors, probably 1968. The exterior staircase on what should be the street-facing facade is too wide for a fire exit — wider than any code requires, wider than any comparable building of this scale and era. Someone at some point in the design process thought: the staircase should be visible. Then the building turned its back on it. The staircase got pushed to the rear elevation. The street got a closed concrete face.

This image is the building in the version where that decision held.

Not a re-imagination. Not a homage to a named architect. The staircase is the face of the building because someone decided it should be, and in this version they didn’t change their mind. The ascent is the proposal.

What I noticed walking past this morning: the plastic bucket on the second-floor landing where a plant used to be. The worn smooth surface of the landing concrete. The stair was wide enough for two people to pass. It had been designed for that. It just wasn’t being used that way.

The difference between this work and the first one: the first building came from history. This one was standing next to me at 09:47.