Osaka Municipal Wholesale Market Honjo

The wholesale market is designed as the first multi-layered (lower floor: fish, upper floor: fruit and vegetable) market in Japan to effectively use the site in the city center. We aimed to create a facility that is easy to enter and exit, through a detailed analysis of the car and people’s circulation and the systematic and rational planning of the functions. In addition, it emphasizes the environmental design to achive a comfortable atmosphere for the users, as exemplified by the consideration of natural ventilation and appropriate lighting. The theme was to create a market as a “kitchen pantry for Osaka citizens”—a facility directly linked to everyday life. By improving the visitors route for viewing, elaborating the details on a human scale to mitigate the building’s massiveness, and by adopting bright accent colors for the façade to express the liveliness and friendliness, we designed a market tha is open to and would be loved by the people.