Background

Since the early Showa period, Tenshodo employed local residents and served as a gathering place woven into community life—selling school uniforms for Shirone Junior High and High School students. For today's elderly residents especially, it remains a nostalgic site of their youth. As the fashion leader of its time, Tenshodo was a cultural center that shaped the district's identity.

With the passage of time, this long-standing clothing store closed six years ago and became vacant. The progression of shuttered shopping streets due to aging populations and lack of successors has become a serious problem, and revitalizing the entire community—including engaging nuclear families and young people in community activities—has emerged as a major challenge.

Survey results showed that Minami Ward was the "least healthy" area in Niigata City, attributed to a higher-than-average percentage of elderly-only households, isolation due to limited transportation, and the region's characteristically long winters. Recognizing that individual health is influenced by social determinants including our living environment, economy, and education, we believed it necessary to create a space and community development plan that leveraged artistic thinking while incorporating the perspective of "social determinants of health." Against this backdrop, we formed a community space through hands-on experimentation.

Four Functional Areas on Tenshodo's First Floor

Area ① Free Space Immediately to the right upon entering is a wooden structure with an engawa (veranda) inspired by traditional local machiya architecture, usable for multiple purposes. This space was created through a 9-day workshop during the first year of the project as part of the Community Organizer Citizens' University activities. Led by carpenter and instructor Keiyou Hayashi, participants completed the construction together. Beyond technical instruction, this activity connected physical and mental health through cultural perspectives and environmental changes brought by the warmth and scent of wood.

Area ② Salon The salon, added to the back right, serves as a lecture and meeting space while primarily functioning as Niigata City's Community-Based Integrated Care Model House—a "Community Tea Room" supporting mutual aid systems and healthy life expectancy extension models, addressing the district's high percentage of elderly-only households and isolation due to limited transportation.

Area ③ Archive An archive space housing "memory objects"—promotional materials and products left behind at Tenshodo. The collection consists entirely of items unearthed through repeated cleaning sessions over time, displayed creatively with various types of hangers characteristic of the clothing store arranged along the walls.

Area ④ Play Space Filling the spaces between these three areas is an indoor park with play equipment created in winter 2017, repurposing materials from Tenshodo—chandeliers, showcases, iron hanger racks—into approximately 30 pieces of equipment that leave room for users to imagine their own uses.

To develop ways to use this equipment, we conducted a two-day workshop with residents, joined by Professor Yukisato Shobukawa from Niigata University, who researches aging societies through public health approaches, and Professor Kunihiko Shinoda, who specializes in exercise epidemiology in collaboration with communities. Together, we generated ideas for play that integrated art and health while actually using the equipment.

We re-examined play from multiple angles—redefining words like art, health, play, and games—cross-referencing with users' perspectives. The results exceeded conventional thinking: we created dances using the equipment, generated ideas for physical movement, and discovered that health could be fostered not only through exercise but also by observing children playing joyfully from a distance or simply chatting around the slide. Based on these findings, we developed new utilization methods for Tenshodo, spatial improvements, and "play recipe" guides for reference as needed.