How It Began
Our Story
Strong Fit Center was founded in 2014 by architectural historian Keiko Murakami after a research fellowship in Kyoto revealed just how rapidly the city's machiya townhouses were being demolished to make way for modern construction.
What began as a personal photographic archive grew into a collaborative platform. By 2016, a small team of researchers, translators, and architects was documenting structures across multiple prefectures, building relationships with local preservation groups, temple administrators, and farming communities.
Today, Strong Fit Center operates from our base in Kanazawa — a city that itself escaped wartime bombing and retains one of Japan's most intact historic districts — and works with partners across the country to ensure no structure is lost without record.
Our archive now exceeds 850 documented structures, 12,000 photographs, and 300 hours of recorded oral history from craftspeople and long-term residents.