空 Emptiness or Sky　【kuː or sora】

“At the beginning, 空 exists.

Architecture would be build to cause the emergence of the 空 as the visible”.

This is the “plot” that I first wrote for this architecture。

Kyoto Seika University was established in 1968.

It was a small school that had only about 200 students

but now has grown up to have over 4,000 students in 4 faculties, Art, Design, Manga, and Humanities.

The main building as a head office, which was built at the early stage of the history,  became old and too small to administrate this university.

In 2007, we began to plan a new main building, also as an event for 40th anniversary.

People would see a main building as a “face” of the university.

They, who come to this campus, must meet this face at first.

So I thought I should design the expression of the face.

People, who will be invited by this expression to enter the building,

should have an experience through the story of space.

The expression and the experience became main theme for me to design it.

I would design the expression not with arbitrary way but with the environment.

I tried to draw many lines according to the surroundings of the site and then make the shape by connecting the crossing points made by these lines.

You may suppose I drew the first line according to the landscape or circulation,

but I didn’t so.

The first line that I drew was for dragging sky into the building.

These lines made a void shaped as a big tower.

This void has no scenery but only a vision of the sky.

It has no function. It’s just tower showing us the emptiness.

Surrounding the emptiness, many lines were drawn to make the shape of the building.

A huge triangle emerged as the façade. I designed with glasses so that people can see the inside of the building and also the landscape reflected on it.

It would be the expression of the “face” that people may first meet.

People will enter the building with invited by the expression and have a vision of the sky.

Then, they may go up stairs to seize the sky.

Staircases are colored red or blue with the light from the sky. When they reach the highest floor,

they would find a top of the tower as like a rock in a roof garden.

But at the time, sky is no longer there.

It has run to the west of mountains that you can only see from the garden.

This is the “story” that I wrote for the architecture.