The basement gymnasium with strong exposed concrete wall columns and beams

Fujimura Junior and Senior High Schools were established in 1932, as sister schools of Tokyo Women's College & Junior College of Physical Education that pioneered the Japanese women's gymnastics world. This building, which was constructed to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the school, is a new school building containing multipurpose gymnasium halls and classrooms.
The building site is located relatively close to the JR Kichijoji Station in western Tokyo, in a quiet residential area with some small restaurants and boutiques. The requirement was to construct a compact building containing an ordinary classroom zone with attached classrooms, a gymnasium and an outdoor athletic space on the long, thin site measuring 16 meters east to west and 64 meters north to south on the southern side of the road. Across the road, on the northern side of the road is the main school building.
In order to secure the largest volume possible, while keeping the type 1 residential area road slant line and elevation slant line regulations, a long, thin box-shaped structure was put into the ground with the basement area and aboveground area volumes being about the same.

Service core zones with stairways and elevators are positioned at each end of the long sides. Out of consideration for preventing noise to be heard nearby, the gymnasium was built in the basement of the middle of the building between the service core zones, and the classrooms were built in the aboveground area. The outdoor athletic space was built on top of the building.
The arrayed gate-shaped rigid frame structures with PS beams spanning 2.6 by 12.6 meters make up a long tube-shaped structure in the direction of the long axis. The array of strong exposed concrete wall columns and beams in the Gothic-style gate-shaped frame is designed to express the dynamic feeling of the "body" and ordered "sense" in the large open space of the basement gymnasium. With the aboveground classrooms, the repetitive vertical striped chain of the concrete structural columns and the double-layered window openings in the horizontal direction gives the overall expression of the never-ending development of "body" and "sense" to the eastern-side façade. The gentle human touch of this ripple effect creates a visual harmony with the surrounding town.