Location: Osaka, Japan

Design Team: TORAFU ARCHITECTS

Total Floor Area: 238.14 m²

Site Area: 91.43 m²

Year: 2026

Program: Retail

Construction: D.BRAIN

Lighting Design: BRANCH LIGHTING DESIGN

Washi: Wataru Hatano

Woodwork: Naruki Takahashi

Leatherwork: Isamu Kawabata

Photography: Taichi Ano

Design Features: BIRKENSTOCK SHINSAIBASHI occupies three levels of a new building in one of Osaka’s busiest retail districts. Rather than reproducing shoes, cork or familiar brand graphics, TORAFU ARCHITECTS began with the elementary act of walking and translated the contact between foot and ground into spatial terms. Retail occupies the first two floors, with storage above; continuous material surfaces and a vertically unfolding route turn the transition from street to interior into an extended walking sequence.

The predominantly white interior is lined with washi surfaces made by artisan Wataru Hatano, who mixed earth into the paper to give the display walls the grain and warmth of ground. An enlarged version of the outsole’s bone pattern is pressed into this surface. Detached from its graphic scale, it reads like a trail left across an abstract landscape, while recessed product displays allow architecture and merchandising to share a single backdrop.

Solid-wood works by Naruki Takahashi form a deliberate counterpoint to the soft paper walls. Knots, curves and irregular edges remain visible in stools, display bases and sculptural objects distributed across both sales floors. Their substantial volumes are lifted slightly above the floor, so the shadow line tempers their weight and gives the route a rhythm of changing heights, textures and pauses. The material pairing reconnects an industrial product with bodily memories of soil and forest.

The stair continues this emphasis on making. Its leather-wrapped handrail was stitched piece by piece on site, placing evidence of craft exactly where visitors touch the building. Upstairs, wider spacing between walls, objects and displays gradually slows movement. The project avoids a single theatrical gesture; its character accumulates through tactile transitions, hovering furniture and carefully judged changes in scale.

At the end of the second floor, two full-height mirrors face one another. Osaka’s streets, timber pieces, products and moving bodies repeat into a depth beyond the shop’s physical boundary. The mirrors do more than enlarge a narrow plan: they turn the suggestion of continued walking into the final spatial image. Earth enters paper, timber retains the memory of the forest, leather records the hand of the maker, and reflection carries each step back toward the city.

Design Team: TORAFU ARCHITECTS was founded in 2004 by Koichi Suzuno and Shinya Kamuro. Suzuno studied at Tokyo University of Science and completed a master’s degree at Yokohama National University before working with Coelacanth K&H and Kerstin Thompson Architects in Melbourne. Kamuro studied architecture at Meiji University, where he also completed his master’s degree, and later worked at Jun Aoki & Associates. Together they bring projects of very different scales into one architectural mode of thinking.

The studio works across architecture, interiors, exhibitions, products, installations and film. Its projects often begin with the behaviour of a material, a method of fabrication or an everyday action, turning these observations into concise but inventive constructions. Key works include TEMPLATE IN CLASKA, NIKE 1LOVE, House in Kohoku, airvase, Gulliver Table and Big T; airvase entered the permanent collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 2015.

For BIRKENSTOCK SHINSAIBASHI, TORAFU collaborated with contractor D.BRAIN, lighting designer BRANCH LIGHTING DESIGN, washi artisan Wataru Hatano, wood artist Naruki Takahashi and leather craftsperson Isamu Kawabata. Their contributions were not applied as decoration after the fact. Paper, timber, light and hand stitching became the means through which the store expresses the brand’s relationship with craft, the body and walking.