Japan 2017Toho Gakuen School of Music
Toho Gakuen School of Music is known as one of the finest colleges in the world that has produced a number of excellent artists who now lead the field of classical music. The project is to design a new school building in wood for the department of music. The building is 4-storied, fire-proofed construction that uses membrane-typed resistance, which is going to be a rare big-scale wooden building in Japan. Pine and cypress (hinoki) are used for the members because of their strength, and Noto-grown cypress (hiba) is employed for the exterior for its excellent weather resistance. In the interior, larch plywood is used intensively to express “culture of wood” with its rich texture. The large eave in the front and the outer wall are designed as a single surface of origami, for which sliding boards are applied. We then prepared a communal space that connects the building and the rest of the campus. Wide corridors are joining practice rooms, which also can be used for the students to practice individually. We provided many places in the building for people to communicate and interact, which is unusual for a conventional schoolhouse.
