Coelacanth K&H Architects

After experiencing the sever nature of the Tsunami, and what we should be created for the future. I felt that it would not work through superficial words such as the simply school reconstruction and children would make the town cheerful. For me, it turned into a turning point to rethink the essence of learning. Luckily, as relocating to a higher place began to develop, Higashi Matsushima City has already started moving by "Learning of Forest" which is as a big food.

In the face of learning plans in tree houses and forests, the way school buildings and modern architecture have been repeated has not been required at all.
So, to adopt nature's activities through rhythms of learning.

I wanted to aim for architecture that a small schoolhouse was released into nature.
A series of pleasant spaces creates a chain and a separation of learning for small groups, and the scenery of outside and scenery of learning inside are cut away in many lights and tree grids, and as if we look into a kaleidoscope, " visualization of fluid learning", in other words, to realize work hard each other.

It can also be said that this is simultaneously creating a motivation for learning and a feeling of security of being together with everyone.

If you look the children's enthusiasm, smile and works decorated everywhere, you can see it is not necessary to use stiffly nicknames like classrooms, hallways and open spaces. Below the large roof, a small roof-shaped canopy becomes the spot marked of whereabouts, and a gentle array deviation naturally born along the landform makes the direction of hitting the line of sight and the direction of light hit more complicated, and the tension that equidistance creates is eliminated, create a space as a natural thing.

There is no point in asking whether it is the opened-planning or the closed-planning as the architecture planning. It makes us want to stay there, do something, see something, touch something, listen something. It may be appropriate to express "An elementary school that can feel from five senses".

The tree warmth and aroma are abundantly felt, and the beauty of the warm light in the evening scene makes the most of the characteristics of the wooden school building, it is beyond description. Especially, the view to the sea, to the forest from the special classroom building at the second floor is the symbol of the integration of both the sea and mountain elementary schools, and it is planed some stage plays of expression which fit to small scale schools, and now various activities are being conducted.

The whole school is a wooden structure, and it is mainly composed by combinations of small diameter materials which are distributed generally. Not only around the classrooms, even a large gymnasium is realized using a same rigid frame structure of lattice beams.