Jack Pohler

The physical act of traditional Japanese craft is inseparable from sound. From the resonance of manipulated metal and hide to the acoustic identity of a district whose textile industry has largely faded but whose legacy persists. This thesis proposes a dedicated manufacturing centre for Taiko drums and Bonsho bells in Kyoto’s Nishijin district in order to reframe manual craft labour as a sonic ritual rather than purely industrial production.

The building is conceived as an architectural instrument. Its spatial sequence traces the lifecycle of the objects produced within it, moving from the raw intensity of the casting floor through acoustic tuning zones and into a public performance space. Structural and material decisions throughout are oriented around the manipulation, isolation and filtering of what the thesis terms the “creative noise” of craft production.

The building utilises structural logics to mediate between this acoustic intensity and the quiet of the surrounding temples. The casting core employs a concrete box-in-box construction which provides acoustic decoupling from the ground alongside the fire safety requirements of foundry work. The performance space is defined by an exposed mass timber grid, topped by a tectonic membrane: an intricate reciprocal lattice structure that reinterprets traditional Japanese joinery as an acoustic filter. Internally, rotating resonant timber panels allow craftspeople to actively adjust the reverberation of the space in real time.

By linking tectonic resolution with acoustic performance, the architecture becomes a participant in the craft itself, capturing the noise of production and refining it into controlled resonance.