C+A revives landmark building in kyoto university of foreign studies

the kyoto university of foreign studies, or kufs, is located in the heart of kyoto city just ten minutes by car from jr kyoto station in the northwest direction. currently, a total of 12 aging buildings are standing densely in the campus site while half of them do not meet current earthquake resistance standards in japan. so, a proposal competition was held to reconstruct one of the oldest ones, which is the building no4. since the building was located in the center of the campus, japanese firm C+A’s reconstruction of building no4 revived the whole campus.

image © hiroshi tanigawa

although any planning outside the building was not requested, C+A envisioned a long-span campus masterplan to update other aging buildings and at the same time create more activity flows between them. careful observation and detailed research was carried out by entering every single room available in the campus to study the behavior of students and teachers on how they spend their time in the university on different occasions.

image © daici ano

as a result to the master planning and studies, a transparent ‘learning commons’ space was placed on the ground level (first floor + mezzanine) where activities are visible to anyone. administration office including career center was lifted up onto the second floor while a combination of classrooms and the flexible learning area is distributed among the third to fifth floors. classrooms of various sizes and several types of flexible learning areas are intended to trigger spontaneous learning activities any student or group of students can choose to study in.

image © hiroshi tanigawa

the project succeeded in enhancing the vibrancy of the campus with the transparent learning spaces expanding from south to north connecting two beautiful gardens katarai-no-niwa and shizuka-na-niwa, which were totally isolated by the former no.4 building. groups of students can be seen throughout forming a free learning field spreading widely with building no 4 as its heart. the university community, along with the architects, look forward to the evolution of the building to act as a campus hub to drive kufs towards the future.

image © daici ano

image © hiroshi tanigawa

image © daici ano

image © hiroshi tanigawa

project info:

architecture firm: C+A

project name: kyoto univeristy of foreign studies, building 4

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edited by: cristina gomez | designboom