Sakushin Gakuin University

908 Takeshitamachi, Utsunomiya-shi, Tochigi, Japan
2000.03
University
22,472.81m2

Thomas Jefferson, the third US President, was not only a founder but also a designer of University of Virginia. In designing the university buildings, he used the term, “academical village” as its design concept. Some may wonder why he used the term ‘village’, which is more than just the opposite concept of ‘city’. The characteristic of ‘village’ is that architecture there does not try to hard to draw all the attention to itself. In other words, no buildings in a village have a strong ‘form’ through which the existence of its designer/architect can be seen. Instead, what plays the center role there is various landscapes that exist in spaces in between buildings. Jefferson’s idea was that what is the most important for the university is to create many outside spaces, where communication can naturally take place between students or between students and faculty.

The campus of Sakushin Gakuin University was also designed with “academical village” as a fundamental concept. Just as there is a spacious area called “Great Lawn” at the center of the campus of University of Virginia, the central part of Sakushin Gakuin University is a finely tuned progression of lawn, water and large stairs that constitute a wide open, continuous outside space with series of delicate changes. One would notice that the buildings are almost complimentary to the space. To aim that, we used the method that is to change its elevation design at the corner. This method enables the buildings to lose its own completeness as merely objects, and thus the campus as a whole gives various impressions to ones who see it with movement of perspective within it. As one walks from open square to little allies, the group of buildings in this ‘village’ gives various impressions. The biggest attraction of ‘village’ is, rather than letting one main building dominate the whole area, fragmented architecture is designed to reveal its many faces as one moves from one place to another. This method helps buildings become more than simple objects; it makes existing structure invisible and the hidden sequences are allowed to emerge.