Keio has a few campuses, and two of them have architecture courses. Sometimes we work together, but not nearly as much as we should. To encourage more collaboration the faculty and admin took the step to combine their efforts under a single umbrella group, called KEIO ARCHITECTURE, which also comes with a website

To mark the occasion Pritzker Prize winner Shigeru Ban gave a lecture in Japanese, translated loosely as "Working Creatively While Contributing Socially". Ban's career as a world traveling contributor to the social needs of communities struck by disaster began at Keio University SFC campus. It was propelled by the Project-based education system of the campus that requires students to act as well as think about real projects in the real world. Ban is exceptional at this kind of education and gave an inspiring lecture about how he has managed to balance his time between traditional clients and pro bono work. One of the secrets is that he treats both efforts with the same amount of attention. Ban remains a professor at Keio, one of three Pritzker winners (Sejima and Maki also taught here) to have taught at the school in recent years.

The website is in progress, but is the first one to introduce the architecture program so clearly, and I expect it will fill out as the school gathers momentum. It includes a good introduction to the work of the labs and the professors - a big step forward. Check it out if you want to get a better idea of the work the professors are doing.