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JAPAN,   HIGASHINO: THE EISHIN CAMPUS

This page is dedicated to Hisae Hosoi, Mr. Sakaida, Murakoshi-san, Mr. Nodera, Sumiyoshi-san, Hiro Nakano, Miyoko Tsutsui,and all the other teachers, staff, and students who gave their work and support to the creation of this campus
PROJECT HISTORY Eishin Gakuen, an innovative private high school, was originally located in Musashino-shi, outside Tokyo. They decided to build a new school which was to become a combination high-school and college, on a new site of 9 hectares, once tea bush land, outside Tokyo, in Iruma-shi, Saitama Prefecture.

The architectural commission to build this community, came with the explicit insistence, by the managing director of the school, Hisae Hosoi, that he wanted the project to be done under conditions where faculty, staff, and students, were all taking part in the design process. And by this he meant, not the pablum of token "participation" and "charettes" that has become common in the last twenty years, but honest-to-goodness decision making by the people in the school, based on individual and group understanding.

Mr. Murakoshi, the school's vice-principal, went further. He told me that the school, as a whole, wanted to rebuild their own culture, in such a way as to build deeper allegience and practice to humane principles -- and he want me to take care, as far as it was possible, that the physical layout and spiritual cooperation of the members of the school, would have this effect: the creation of a new culture.


Laying out the campus, with flags, so that we could all, together, feel the buildings and the spaces of the neighborhood, adjust them, again and again, until they felt just right.



The campus in winter.
Gymnasium, classrooms, and the lake.


 Tea bushes left in place to form gardens on the campus


Hosoi, deep in thought.


Views of streets and public places on the campus

 POINTS OF SPECIAL INTEREST IN THIS PROJECT

Of all the projects we have done, this is one where the development of the pattern language and generative process received the most complete, and formal process of discovery of patterns, experiments, modification and formulation of patterns, hammering out a final version in committee, and then formal ratification of our final draft by the body of the whole school: directors, teachers, staff and students.

Extended references on the process of generating the eishin campus		 References





This is the drawing made after placing of all the flags, as shown in the process at head of this page. These flags were carefully transcribed, by position, from the exact position in the field. These became the basis of the plan, and gave the life to the positions of the buildings as they may be seen in photographs: a rather simple naturalness, which arsies, actually, from careful, careful attention to the land, when placing the flags originally.
FURTHER DISCUSSION OF THE GENERATIVE CODE FOR THE EISHIN CAMPUS Final version of the pattern language for the stepwise conception and layout of the Eishin campus
14 pages

Below, the Eishin Campus from the distance, at sunset.



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