Program: A three-story, 83,760-square-foot private elementary school affiliated with Teikyo University in suburban Tokyo. The project includes classrooms, a library, a media center, a music room, a cafeteria, and a gymnasium.
Design concept and solution: Since opening in 2005, Teikyo University Elementary School had outgrown its quarters in one of the university’s existing buildings. The school wanted to give each department its own space while keeping the atmosphere warm and intimate, despite the increase in size. The architects created acedar-clad, reinforced-concrete schoolhouse with a rakish steel roof.Allowing program to dictate form in this long, rectangular building, the team either lifted or lowered the roof in twelve connected segments that suggest a row of houses. They reserved the shorter segments—where specialized programs such as English and musicare concentrated—for the school’s north side to mirror the scale of a public-housing complex across the street. On the building’s south end, three stories of classrooms overlook a playing field. The architects took advantage of the roof’s dramatic angles to create sight lines between upper and lower floors while keeping an intimate scale where it counts, as in the ground-floor classrooms for the youngest children.They gave the interiors a warm palette of recycled wood finishes: laminated poplar on classroom walls, as well as rush board and OSSB panels for walls at entrances and open spaces.
Location: 1254-6 Wada, Tama-shi, Tokyo
