Site
Location:Ohi town, Fukui, Japan
Land area:10798.3m2

Building
Use: Challenge Shop
Structure: Steel
Floor Area:2740.6m2 

Published
2022	GA JAPAN 178
2022	Shinkenchiku 2022:12
2023	Shotenkenchiku 2023:1
2023	C3 Korea no.427
2024	DOMUS 1087

Awards
2023	One of the most beautiful shopping mall by Prix Versailles
2023	World Architecture Festival Best Use on Natural Light

Webpage
Archdaily
Domusweb

At the end of the summer of 2019, I visited Ooi town to the soothing sound of kanakana played by higurashi. 
The site is located on developed coastal reclaimed land, and is in the process of spatial flow connecting from the sea 
to the mountains. The air was warm but viscous, soft and gentle, surrounding me. The idea was to create a comfortable 
environment where people could gather. The outline of the proposal was to establish a ``challenge shop, etc.
that would be a place to take on the challenge of starting a new business or developing a new business. It is important
to attract people, but it is not so much that the shape and design of the building is eye-catching, that is, that it has a 
fixed, unique personality, but rather that it brings together homogeneous spatial units to create a difference in 
concentration. This creates diversity within order. I felt it would be great to create a place where private houses naturally
gather together in a village, creating an attractive spatial concentration along with the topography, an impressive yet 
timeless place that blends in with people's activities. Buildings absorb and store solar energy and sometimes release heat. 
Also, in synchronization with the thermal environment of the earth, there are air-holding units floating in the upper layer.
The atmosphere of the dirt floors and walk-in gardens that once existed in private houses has been lightly recreated in
modern times. Instead of tiled roofs with large thermal capacities or thatched thatched thatched thatch or reeds that hold 
air, here the accumulation of air masses covered with transparent ETFE (fluoroplastic film) exchanges energy with the 
outside like a down jacket, and the lower layer Stabilize the internal environment. A structural prism consisting of slits in 
the cedar louvers diffuses sunlight into the interior, filling the interior environment with a round light. Rather than the 
conventional idea of energy conservation, which uses mechanical equipment to control an environment that is isolated 
from the outside through highly insulated and highly airtight walls, we aim to create an open and gentle environment 
control that connects to the natural environment and surrounding culture. The unit is a basic structure that holds the air,
but at the same time it is also a flexible truss-like structural unit that can expand and multiply indefinitely to support a 
large space. They are endlessly connected, but beneath them a diverse range of people's activities flourish. The 
metaphor of a house is also incorporated into the composition, with the intention of creating a space that feels open 
and intimate.

The unit is a 4.8m square and 2.4m high cube, almost like a hypercube, with a steel cylinder as its core. A 2.4m square 
tower called a tree supports the unit with trusses that extend like branches. The units are continuous in an arch shape, 
creating height differences depending on the quality of the space below, but at the same time the intention is to create 
a change in the quality of the space that corresponds to the topography of the mountains in the background. The WEST 
building, developed by Ooi Town, and the EAST building, developed by the same Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 
have a total of 72 units and 15 tree roofs, and top lights made of ETFE interlace to create a random geometric pattern. 
The roof was originally designed with 3.2mm steel plates sprayed with thermal barrier paint and heat insulating material, 
but at the suggestion of the builder it was decided to use an ultra-strong stretchable waterproof coating. This is integrated
with the ETFE membrane, and the monocoque membrane surface covers the entire roof surface. Although ETFE has 
almost zero insulation performance, it also plays the role of dissipating the heat accumulated in the unit. Even in a down
jacket, the outer skin that encloses the feathers (air mass) is very thin, but energy is breathed through the outer skin.