Waro Kishi + K.Associates

This is a project for a student union hall located in the middle of the campus of Kyoto Institute of Technology, a university which has a more than 70 year history. The building is to have a cafeteria on the first floor and a bookstore as well as a convenience store on the second floor.

As the construction is located in the center of the campus, I decided to take up the context of the school landscape and add new elements and features as an extension of the existing design. 

By examining the seemingly simple grid alignment of the campus plan, a flow of space spreading diagonally from main campus toward Mt. Hiei is found. Thus, the plan becomes to integrate the same obliquely-directed and orthogonal feature to the building.

Re-creating the remnant of a formerly standing factory is also one of the main concepts. My plan proposes to apply the same roof structure, a series of gabled roofs, which would be an appropriate design for an engineering college. The hall is surrounded by a cluster of brown brick-tile buildings that represents the standard style of the whole campus. For this construction, I wanted to use actual bricks instead of brick-tiles for the exterior material as my proposition to return to the original intension.

In order to express the airiness of contemporary architecture at the same time, bricks are used only for the second floor. The first floor, with piloti and glass, is open to the rest of the campus. Also, some parts of the brick walls on the second floor are shaped in a grid structure to adopt an outward perspective through the semi-translucent brick wall. This is a way of exploring the possibilities for openness in structures with brick exterior walls.

The south side of the building includes a wood-deck plaza as a new student’s hangout spot that would bring the bustle of their activity to the campus.