A rectangular house whose ground floor provides a three-hundred-sixty degree view of the outdoors logically implies lots of glass with no obstructing supports or columns. But how do you hold it up?

With steel, naturally.

That’s just what Tezuka Architects did with this “Wall-less” house in Tokyo.

The Tezuka team designed the three-storey house without structural walls to enable the internal space to flow seamlessly into the external garden, and back.

The major architectural challenge was designing a structure that could accommodate the vision of extending the interior space to the edge of the site. The solution was an asymmetrical design with a central structural core using steel as the main material. The longer, lighter end of the house comprises steel cantilevers with two thin steel columns to dampen vibration. The shorter, heavier end incorporates a concrete counterweight to balance the center of gravity and strength of the structure.

“Steel is the most predictable material,” says Takaharu Tezuka. “(With steel), I can predict everything going on.”

The house sits on a conventional concrete foundation and has a roof garden with panoramic views of the surrounding city.

Nature’s trees surrounding the building modulate climate for the house and sliding glass panels protect the interior from the elements, as the householders require.

“(The glass panels are) good enough in Tokyo,” Mr. Tezuka says. “I wouldn’t do the same in Moscow.”

Photography by Katsuhisa Kida, FOTOTECA