Date of Submission
Spring 5-19-2026
Degree Type
Dissertation/Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Architecture
Department
Architecture
Committee Chair/First Advisor
Amin Farooq
Abstract
Onomichi, Japan carries a quiet crisis. Across its hillside arcades, akiya (abandoned properties) outnumber active storefronts, hollowing a town once defined by its dense, walkable culture. Fleeting Roots proposes a decentralized arts and fabrication campus woven through ten existing buildings along the Hondori Arcade, treating vacancy not as decay but as raw material for civic return.
The project rejects the museum impulse that often shadows preservation work. Heritage here is not frozen for tourist consumption. It is reactivated as a site of mutual cultural production, where local craft, visiting practice, and everyday commerce share the same vernacular shell. A precise 1.8 meter Ken grid orders the interventions, while Koshi timber screens filter each threshold, producing a calibrated gradient from public civic hearth to private, introverted sanctuary.
Drawing on principles of renovation machizukuri and traditional Japanese tectonics, the work argues that adaptive reuse can be more than survival. It can be a metabolism, an exchange between what a place was and what it is willing to become. Fleeting Roots is a design that remembers its place, and in remembering, gives that place somewhere to go.