The Reversible Destiny Lofts MITAKA (In Memory of Helen Keller) has started a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for repairs to the iconic apartment building.
The building contains nine rental apartments. It was designed by artist and architect Shusaku Arakawa and writer/artist Madeline Gins and was completed in 2005. Since then it has operated as rental housing, with a portion of the space dedicated to event space and education and cultural programs.
With larger buildings, such as apartment blocks, maintenance and repairs should usually be carried out every 10 ~ 15 years in order to ensure the long-term life of a building. For this building, maintenance was scheduled to take place in 2020. However, the coronavirus pandemic saw all on-site events canceled. Guest numbers for study tours and short-term stays also dropped by a significant amount, limiting revenues that would have gone towards maintenance.
The goal of the crowdfunding campaign hosted on MotionGallery is to raise 10 million Yen (approx. US$91,000) to go towards the most urgent repairs. In the first week, 290 people had donated a total of 5,057,000 Yen to the cause, with the funding deadline on December 10, 2021.
The crowdfunding page can be viewed here (Japanese language):
https://motion-gallery.net/projects/savetherdloftsmitaka
The apartment building is located in Mitaka City, about 15 kilometers west of Shinjuku and a 30-minute walk from the nearest station. In March 2021, a telework rental plan was introduced, with one of the spaces available to be used as a home office for a single or up to four between the hours of 11am and 5pm from Tuesday through to Friday. The daily rate is 11,000 Yen.
Back in 2018, two units were listed for sale. The 60 sqm apartments each had a bedroom, tatami room, study room, and bumpy floor surrounding a sunken kitchen. They were advertised for 170,000 and 180,000 Yen a month.
Location
2-2-8 Osawa, Mitaka City, Tokyo
