A cafe subverting form in the heart of Osaka

On 18 April 2025, FabCafe Osaka opened its doors in the Tenma district of Osaka. To celebrate this momentous occasion, an event titled ‘Urban Margins, Local Contours: New Urban Experiences Through the Unformed’, featuring a talk session.

Banjou Shimabara (Director of the LIFULL HOME’S Research Institute at LIFULL Co., Ltd.), Noriko Matsuda (Associate Professor at Kyoto Prefectural University’s Graduate School) and Kazuto Kojima (Business Director of FabCafe Osaka, who served as moderator) were the featured speakers. Together, they explored the notion of urban values that defy definition or form and the potential of undefined spaces within the city.

The concept behind FabCafe Osaka, titled ‘L’Informe’ (The Unformed), attempts to reframe intangible elements such as emotions, atmospheres and non-structured sensibilities as vital sources of creativity.

Just as scent, sound, light and human relationships cannot easily be quantified, FabCafe Osaka uses these elusive elements as an entry point to reconsider the structure of cities and society. This approach was evident in the opening talk session, where concepts such as the ‘sensuous city’ and ‘responsive urban experiences’ were explored.

This report highlights emerging perspectives on the future of urban life as revealed through guest presentations and cross-dialogue during the event.

Next, Noriko Matsuda took to the stage to present her research on the themes of city and land, and the relationship between water and people, viewed through the lens of architectural and urban history. She focused particularly on the potential of urban experiences that invite emotional and sensory resonance, experiences in which people not only inhabit the city, but also respond to it on a deeper, intuitive level.

Originally, cities were formed in close proximity to their natural surroundings, such as spring water sources, river basins and the landforms that shaped them. Matsuda has been exploring these fundamental connections through projects such as ‘Yushutsu Tokyo’, for which she walks and documents the city, starting from its natural springs. She focuses her work on the hidden traces embedded in urban landscapes, such as ancient place names, archaeological sites, and long-term human settlements, while carefully examining the relationships between humans and non-human entities, including nature, water, and land spirits.

This perspective reimagines the city as not merely designed, but shaped by its relationship with the land’s inherent features and non-human entities. It offers a way of reconnecting with the invisible forces and unknowable dimensions beneath the surface of urban life. This approach embraces coexistence with that which cannot be fully seen or controlled.

In the second half, a cross-talk session brought together the two perspectives, leading to a multifaceted discussion on the theme of ‘urban values that cannot easily be defined or given form’.

Matsuda: That’s right. In terms of feeling and responding, responsiveness encompasses relationships with non-human entities, such as plants or water. I believe cities need spaces that acknowledge the dark sides of history, shadowy places and forces beyond the human, like the earth itself. Perhaps these forces aren’t something to be added, but are already deeply embedded in the city.

Shimabara: I value the bodily experience of the city, the idea that physical presence adds value to urban spaces. I wanted to reframe this concept through the lens of sensuality. As Professor Matsuda mentioned, a city has a certain atmosphere or presence that can only be felt when you are actually there. It’s like the solemnity you sense when standing in the grounds of a shrine.

Matsuda: Yes, and if we’re talking about a city’s fundamental context, natural spring sources are part of that too. Some spring ponds still remain in central Tokyo and have been preserved as places of memory and prayer. Gama-ike Pond in Azabu, for example, is tied to a legend of a giant toad that saved a samurai residence from fire during the Edo period. Similarly, Yanagi-no-I in Azabu provided essential water supplies during the Great Kanto Earthquake and World War II. These kinds of forces, which are often invisible in today’s cities, have persisted quietly through time. I believe that by reinterpreting the relationship between land and people in a responsive, sensory way, we can rediscover a deeper dimension of the urban experience.

Kojima: I think it’s important for FabCafe Osaka to engage with that depth as well. We’d like to start experimenting with things that don’t lend themselves to easy categorization, such as working with distillation tools to capture scents or launching activities that draw on the plants and water embedded in the urban environment.

Shimabara: But you know, scent never shows up in urban planning documents! Still, if you think about the smell of a local deli or yakitori stand on a shopping street, it’s clear that smell is one of the things that makes people fall in love with a neighborhood. It would be fascinating to include that kind of element as a sensory indicator in urban research.

Matsuda: A key point for FabCafe Osaka will be figuring out how to connect quantitative measurements with qualitative sensory experiences through research and practice. For example, birdsong, the sound of water and the smell of soil. Using these sensory cues as a starting point, we can begin to rediscover the contours of the city. In doing so, we also refresh our perception of what it means to experience the urban environment.

How should we evaluate a city, and how can we become more attuned to it?

The two speakers offered a multi-perspective framework for perceiving the intangible values embedded in urban life through their distinct yet intersecting approaches.

Kojima discussed the potential of FabCafe Osaka as a venue for putting these discussions into practice.

Experiments are already underway to reinterpret the city’s invisible values as lived experiences, such as installing scent-based distillation devices to evoke sensory engagement, and launching research activities focused on relationships with spring water and urban vegetation. He also introduced a future initiative: the creation of a Sensory Evaluation Working Group, which will be a collaborative effort involving companies and citizens to develop and test new indicators for measuring urban sensibility.

What constitutes a responsive urban experience?
What language and methods are required to honor the subtle impressions of depth, memory and that ineffable sense of ‘something just feels right’?
Rather than rushing to find answers, perhaps we need to pause and reflect.

This discussion reminded us that FabCafe Osaka can serve as such a crossroads, a place where open-ended questions about the city lead to new ways of seeing, sensing and shaping urban life.

Written by: Mai Miyazaki (Loftwork)

Photography by: Noriko Uemura

Translated by: Eri Nakagawa (Loftwork)