Tsuruhashi Shopping Street Redevelopment Using Rammed Earth Construction

Project idea

The project is set in Tsuruhashi Shopping Street in Osaka, a historical area rooted in Japan’s post-war black market era. The district, characterized by dense wooden structures and spontaneous urban growth, is facing structural decay and urban redevelopment pressure. This proposal seeks to preserve the intangible culture of commercial vitality ("Tsukuroi") through a concrete wall construction method, using store exteriors as formwork.
These “walls” act not only as structural reinforcements and fire barriers, but also as memory devices that retain the imprint and texture of demolished buildings. The goal is to propose an alternative urban regeneration model: not erasing the past, but letting it be inherited through architecture itself.

Project description

The scope includes both architectural intervention and socio-cultural regeneration. The project spans three phases:1.Reinforcement Phase – Casting concrete walls around existing stores to support their aging structures and maintain the streetscape. 2.Memory Phase – After stores are removed, the remaining textured walls preserve the memory of the original architecture. 3.Regeneration Phase – New uses such as coworking offices and conference rooms are introduced using the walls as framework, allowing commercial activities to expand vertically and spatially within the shopping district.
The design embraces the idea of layering, erosion, and informal spatial negotiation as a way of fostering a new model of heritage-driven development.

Technical information

The project is situated in the historic Tsuruhashi Shopping Street in Osaka, Japan, where a dense concentration of aging wooden buildings poses both structural and fire safety concerns. The technical strategy centers around a reinforcement and demolition method in which reinforced concrete walls are cast using the exterior facades of existing shops as one side of the formwork. This unique approach not only strengthens the buildings but also preserves their surface textures through a technique similar to frottage, effectively transferring the material memory of the old structures onto the new concrete surfaces.

These concrete walls serve a dual purpose. Initially, they reinforce and protect the fragile commercial spaces, functioning also as firewalls to mitigate the risk inherent in such densely packed wooden environments. Over time, as shops are dismantled, the walls remain as imprinted memory devices, maintaining a physical trace of what once stood there.

The design introduces new programs such as coworking spaces, private web meeting booths, and shared conference rooms, inserted gradually into the existing urban fabric. These new functions are integrated with minimal demolition, using the memory-bearing walls as structural cores. Through this phased, adaptive reuse strategy, the project enables a three-dimensional urban renewal while honoring the spatial and cultural heritage of the site.

Documentation

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