Harmonie Hall in Kobe

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Harmonie Hall in Kobe

Firm

Takenaka Corporation

Type

Educational › High School

Photography is by Yasuhiro Inazumi and Tomoki Hahakura

The Kobe International Junior High School and Senior High School Harmonie Hall was
based on an idea of a clear and open axial plan utilizing concrete and wood to respond
to the campus’ history while creating a new relationship with the natural landscape.
Harmonie Hall is an ancillary facility that includes a teacher’s room, storage, toilets, and
a gymnasium that can be used as both a basketball court and an auditorium.
This building is designed to capture the most from the rich surrounding environment
while inheriting the formal language of the campus as it exists today. Functionally, gyms
tend to be enclosed spaces removed from their surrounding environment, but this time,
by utilizing a wood structural frame, the building is in concert with the vibrant local
environment as much as possible.
The south side leads to an existing building and is comprised of a long 20m wood
structural span for views of the woodlands supported by a 6m high and 46m long
concrete wall. Opening the building to the lush ecosystem of the north campus was a
natural configuration.
By supporting the horizontal force with concrete walls on three sides, with the north side
being the exception, the structural roof frame was designed to transfer vertical load to
the wooden poles on the north facade.

The north side is a rich and open ecosystem. Through the framing of landscape views,
the beautiful surroundings engage with the space and offer openness by using the trees
and sky to highlight the structural frame. From the beginning, the design has been
interested in offering the experience of simultaneous continuity between the paired
horizontal open spaces.
Furthermore, by providing a sufficient aperture to the wind and natural landscape, a
space filled with light and consistent breezes from the north is realized.
Also, by using vegetation identified from research and field surveys, trees are
transplanted from the construction staging areas while simultaneously cultivating local
seeds as a means to visually and biologically produce a landscape of continuity with the
local context. The idea for using structure to maximize openness to the surrounding environment,
both conceptually and visually, marries the wind and light of the natural environment
with the new space. The environment is the architecture.

The context for this project was a combined junior and high school located in the
peaceful hills overlooking Suma with a view of the Akashi Straits and Awaji Island. This
school was established in 1992 with aims to foster women with prolific knowledge and
grace, and the campus has since been designed with the theme that the campus has
made an impression on their memory. The exposed concrete of the design provides a
sense of integration with the campus which includes many memorable places.
The existing school buildings, located on the north-south and east-west axes, consist of
just two basic geometric shapes, the square and the circle, and were built of exposed
concrete. This prompt for this project was to build a gymnasium the size of a basketball
court for the 20th anniversary. For this project, I tried to create a new gymnasium, on
the angle shaped site located in the west part of the campus, that was in harmony, to
the greatest degree possible, with the surrounding environment. The junior high school
building has a circular hall in the center which is surrounded by open related rooms.
This memorable hall within the square shaped form is inserted into the hill, but for this
project I aimed to create memorable places between this building and the hills.

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Harmonie Hall in Kobe

Harmonie Hall in Kobe

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