A factory designed by one of Japan’s leading modernist architects during WWII has been discovered in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka. The factory was designed by Togo Murano (1891-1984) and completed in 1941. The steel-frame building is 60 meters wide and 150 meters long.

Long-since thought to have been one of Murano’s ‘phantom factories’ that were never constructed, this steel mill in the Tobata District of the Yawata Steel Works is still in use 76 years after its construction. Several other factories designed by Murano were built in Yawata but later demolished.

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