Japanese-Designed Vertical House Is Built For Crowded City Living

As popular cities have become overrun with inhabitants, many are forced to give up the basic comfort of space to live in a cultural hub.

But Muji, the Japanese retail company known for it's minimalistic products, has designed a spacious home specifically for urban dwellers living in tight spaces - by building up.

The home employs many strategies for making a space looking bigger than it actually is: there are no internal walls or doors, a large open stairwell runs through the entire house, and it has plenty of bright windows that let in natural sunlight. The prefabricated 'Vertical House' prototype is located in the notoriously overcrowded Tokyo. It occupies a small plot of land that is spread across three stories. The home has a "split-level system" where all functions and programs are placed side-by-side, so that the space has a more connected environment. The home has a simplistic style, and is minimally decorated with Muji products.

It will be available in Japan in seven different variations for about 20 million yen ($180,116), according to Quartz.