Takaharu Tezuka. Photo via Tezuka Architects
When Fuji Kindergarten in Tokyo was awarded the Moriyama RAIC International Prize in September, it marked an affirmation of the building?s innate ability to teach and inspire at both the local and international scale. The Kindergarten, designed by Tokyo-based Tezuka Architects, is one of the firm?s many projects that sensitively blend building and landscape in such a way that the spaces become unimagineable without one another. Following the awarding of the Moriyama Prize on September 19th, a telephone interview with Takaharu Tezuka was conducted by Jeremy Schipper, a Master of Architecture student at the University of British Columbia School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Schipper has studied in Tokyo and visited the Kindergarten in person. The following text is excerpted from their conversation. CA: A feeling of openness to the surroundings may be common in Japanese architecture, but it?s deployed very specifically in Fuji Kindergarten, as the windows open around circular tracks that look like tree rings on the ground. How did you want the inhabitants of the building to feel about this openness, and what have been its effects"
Fuji Kindergarten. Photo by Katsuhisa Kida / Fototeca
Tezuka: That idea is not from me?it?s older. Fuji Kindergarten teaches Montessori education, where children of different age groups are together so that they learn how to help each other, like a family. So in this education, that open...