DDAA honors pottery-making heritage of hasami-cho with 'maruhiro' porcelain store

a place of pottery since the edo period

With its recently completed Maruhiro flagship store and HIROPPA park, Tokyo-based architecture practice DDAA celebrates the pottery-making heritage of Hasami-cho, a small town in Japan‘s Nagasaki Prefecture. The town has seen the flourishing of pottery-making since the Edo period, resulting in around 30% of the residents involved in the practice today. The design team was commissioned by Maruhiro, one of the region’s leading companies specializing in porcelain production and sales, to design a mixed use complex including a flagship store surrounded by a park.

images by Kenta Hasegawa

ddaa invites lovers of the craft to its maruhiro flagship

Maruhiro commissioned the team at DDAA (see more here) to create a place where local people could support the local industry. Enthusiasts of the pottery industry are invited to visit from afar, and to gather spontaneously and closely experience Hasami-yaki pottery and diverse cultures. Those at Maruhiro thought that this could be achieved not by a store or museum that only serves a single purpose, but by a ‘park’ that accommodates diverse purposes in a generous manner, and the team strongly sympathized with their idea.

A private park for all

With the openness of the private park surrounding the Maruhiro flagship store, DDAA invites visitors of all ages and genders to freely enter and spend time as they like. The team notes: ‘The public nature of the space created for the benefit of the community are precisely the kind of quality that a park can offer. Something that emerges out of such a place may, in turn, enliven the region and local industry, and trigger changes for the better and help solve problems including a lack of successors and declining sales.’

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project info:

project title: Maruhiro flagship store and HIROPPA Park

architecture: DDAA / SOUP DESIGN Architecture

client: Maruhiro inc.
location: Hasami town, Nagasaki
project team: Daisuke Motogi / Riku Murai (DDAA) / Nobuaki Doi (SOUP DESIGN Architecture)
structure design: yasuhirokaneda STRUCTURE
construction: KAMIYAMA , Saikai Engei Co.,Ltd.
completion: August 2021
photography: Kenta Hasegawa