Heatherwick Studio has revealed the design for the first school project in the practice’s history. Situated in Tokyo, The British School seeks to be the largest international school in the city when it opens in August 2023.
The 16,000-square-foot scheme is spread across eight levels and features several landscaped outdoor learning and recreational spaces including on upper floors. The design team imagine the cascading outdoor spaces as social areas where teachers can work with the school’s 800 pupils, with planted balconies to be cared for by students.
“Most inner-city schools don’t have enough playground space and the site was quite restricted,” explained Heatherwick Studio partner Neil Hubbard in a statement. “So we wedged playgrounds between each of the classrooms, creating outdoor learning spaces where pupils can explore and interact with each other and their teachers much more freely than in traditional school environments.”
“[The project’s] brick spandrels nod to the materiality of the historic Azabudai post office and undulate to create open balconies and variety along the elevation,” Hubbard added. “It’s a little bit playful like a school should be.”
In addition to the classrooms, the school will also include shared areas for independent and group learning, two libraries, a suite of music studios, an art studio, a STEM center, two sports pitches, a dance studio, a sports hall, and an indoor swimming pool. The development will also see the creation of a 64,000-square-foot landscaped public square feeding off a lower-level podium, serving a wider newly-constructed district which the team estimate will be visited by 25 to 30 million people per year.
News of the scheme comes one month after Heatherwick unveiled the design of a new park in Milwaukee developed in collaboration with Harley-Davidson. The firm has also recently opened a new office in Shanghai while providing an update on the construction of their Toranomon-Azabudai district in Tokyo.
16 Comments
Meh
I'm surprised that anyone given the opportunity to build in Tokyo would make such a timid design. It looks like it belongs somewhere in the USA. The "using brick relates to some old building nearby" trope is especially tiresome and unnecessary here. Tokyo buildings are generally very forward-looking.
Tokyo building are definitely not generally forward looking. When I saw the design I thought it looked like a typical but slightly better than average Japanese building. Then scrolled down and saw that it is in Japan. Something about the tile finish and the details screams generic Tokyo. Looks like Heatherwick had a low budget and is working in partnership with a builder who is dictating a large part of the design. I can imagine all the conversations that led up this outcome as I have had most of them myself. Earthquakes, costs, local construction techniques, risk adverse client, this is the way we do it, etc etc
I expect more from Thomas F’ing Heatherwick. If costs, etc, we’re an issue, they should have just hired a local like Nikkei Sekkei and used uthe savings on design fees to give Donki gift cards to the children!
Yeah, I suppose. He has a practice, and is doing work to keep it running. It's not the spectacle of most of his work but is doing the work that architecture needs to do. It does not compare well to the work that made his name, and if this was all there was then no one would have heard of him. Still, I can't help but wonder at the sincerity of that kind of comment in general (not you specifically). Too showy and he gets shit for building his ego, not showy enough and he is panned for not showing off his funky side. There is no winning if the critiques are only at that level. For what it is worth, my guess is that this IS mostly a project by Nikken Sekkei or similar, with a veneer of Heatherwick on top. That is a common practice in Japan, even for architects like Kuma or Sejima. It takes finesse and cultural knowledge to navigate the possible downside of that kind of relationship in Japan, and even then no guarantees. Looks like he got caught in a current, which is quite powerful. It happens a lot when non-Japanese try to work in Japan. Happens a lot with Japanese architects too, for that matter...hence the bland urban landscape all around me ;-)
Heatherwick probably has a big overhead, with how large the firm headcount is now. They have to take on more work and standardize office processes. It invariably affects project quality.
The Azabudai post office—why reference this, especially given what it is, a school, and all that surrounds in Tokyo, where it's going? And the reference, such as it is, is faint.
The Heatherwick doesn't recall the past, or Tokyo. Or anywhere. Nor does it look forward. It doesn't say anything about what it is, a school, that might distinguish it in its surroundings and highlight its special purpose. Those rounded, overlapping supports and forms—all it conjures is another example of Heatherwick cleverness.
The flowering trees in the renderings are nice.
I'm not sure why a building has to look forward or backwards. Looks like a perfectly nice building compared to the average Tokyo streetscape or for that matter most modern cities.
I expect this will look better in real life than in the renderings. Some nice features that will look great with lots of people actually using the spaces. At the very least the extra activity on the street will be a nice addition.
It is a British school, which I assume influenced the choice of architect. I'm curious how that would work, how much the school wants to assert its separate, even national identity, how much it wants and has to fit in.
Heatherwick is presented in many places as one of the leading lights in architecture, thus merits close and critical question. Obviously I am dubious. Actually, I dislike this less than his other work.
Makes sense, Gary.
It's a school for the children of wealthy expats. Many countries are present in Tokyo this way, prepping their kids for when the expats go back home. The education is not better or worse than Japanese schools, in my opinion, but they do have a certain cache and often enough you will hear of the children of the rich and famous Japanese going as well. Great way to learn to be bilingual.
Meaning they are somewhat integrated into the local goings on. For what it is worth (with notable exceptions) there is zero need to fit architecture into its context in Tokyo, physically speaking. Japanese don't do that and there is no expectation that anyone should want to. Japan is very libertarian in this regard. On the other hand, they should aim to connect socially, and I am sure the school is extremely well connected that way. From that point of view the open spaces within and around the building make more sense, going beyond what it actually looks like.
In some ways it is that very line of reasoning and questioning that leads to the buildings of Sejima or Fujimoto. Empty of obvious symbolism but powerful stages for daily life...
"open spaces within and around the building make more sense, going beyond what it actually looks like"—a fine idea, nicely put. Something less mannered and less heavy-handed might have better accomplished such a purpose. What would Sou Fujimoto have done?
This school is loaded—pool, libraries, sports pitches, etc. etc. etc. They can't be hurting for cash.
For example: https://www.dezeen.com/2023/03/02/sou-fujimoto-the-square-learning-centre-holcim-concrete-icons-video/
Yeah that project was one of the examples I was thinking about as I wrote. It is possible for Fujimoto because of his particular experiences in Japan, though I recognize this project is in Switzerland. Heatherwick is doing some of the same thing, but it feels like he wasn't able to control the process the way he might normally have done, so the idea is watered down, almost lost. Of course it is possible that I am way off base and this is exactly what he wanted to do from the start. The late but still great Rafael Vinoly once wrote about the process of designing the International Forum in Tokyo...he explained that the Japanese architects and engineers solved problem after technical problem, piling one on top of the other in a perfectly rational way, until the details and design were all solved to perfection, except each step lead to more stuff. The building became heavy and over-designed. So his job then became to strip away all the excess and to only keep the lessons of that exercise, not the outcome. I can imagine that correction and simplification process was long and hard-fought. Maybe Heatherwick had a bit of the same experience ;-)
I like the form :)
Looks nice, but very 80s (filleted corners and the like)
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