Future University of Hakodate
Hakodate, Japan · 2000
Photo · Isao Aihara
A premier precedent for a fully transparent, monumental glass facade that exposes a complex, terraced interior learning environment, ideal for studying institutional transparency and open-plan educational layouts.
- What we like about this project
- The entire multi-story interior program is completely visible from the exterior, erasing the boundary between inside and outside.
Materials
- glass
- steel
- aluminum
- concrete
Visual identifiers
- glass-curtain-wall
- transparent-facade
- terraced-interior
- open-atrium
- institutional-architecture
Style tags
- high-tech
- modernist
- transparent
- rationalist
Visual tags
- transparency
- structural-expressionism
- atrium
- educational-facility
- night-photography
- Geometry
- A monumental, flat rectangular glass curtain wall acts as a transparent screen, revealing a highly structured, multi-tiered orthogonal concrete interior framework behind it.
- Facade system
- Mullion-transom glass curtain wall system.
- Structural guess
- Steel-framed curtain wall supported by an internal concrete column-and-slab structure.
- Spatial scale
- Monumental institutional scale, featuring a multi-story open atrium with visible human-scale furniture and structural columns.
- Lighting
- Cool twilight exterior sky contrasting with bright, warm-toned linear and point-source interior ceiling lights reflecting off the glass.
- Atmosphere
- Luminous, highly ordered, and intellectually open, glowing like a lantern in a dark landscape.
- Environmental context
- Set against a flat, dark grassy foreground under a clear evening sky.
- Spatial experience
- The building envelope dissolves at dusk, transforming the facade into a massive display window that reveals a vast, terraced open-plan learning landscape inside.
- Composition rhythm
- A strict, repeating grid of square glass panels is punctuated by thick vertical steel mullions and horizontal floor plates.
- Style reading
- High-Tech Structural Transparency
- Program
- University building / educational facility
- Perspective
- Exterior Facade
- Discipline
- architecture
- Materials
- glass, steel, aluminum, concrete
- Visual identifiers
- glass-curtain-wall, transparent-facade, terraced-interior, open-atrium, institutional-architecture
- Style tags
- high-tech, modernist, transparent, rationalist
- Visual tags
- transparency, structural-expressionism, atrium, educational-facility, night-photography
- Geometry
- A monumental, flat rectangular glass curtain wall acts as a transparent screen, revealing a highly structured, multi-tiered orthogonal concrete interior framework behind it.
- Facade system
- Mullion-transom glass curtain wall system.
- Structural guess
- Steel-framed curtain wall supported by an internal concrete column-and-slab structure.
- Spatial scale
- Monumental institutional scale, featuring a multi-story open atrium with visible human-scale furniture and structural columns.
- Lighting
- Cool twilight exterior sky contrasting with bright, warm-toned linear and point-source interior ceiling lights reflecting off the glass.
- Atmosphere
- Luminous, highly ordered, and intellectually open, glowing like a lantern in a dark landscape.
- Environmental context
- Set against a flat, dark grassy foreground under a clear evening sky.
- Spatial experience
- The building envelope dissolves at dusk, transforming the facade into a massive display window that reveals a vast, terraced open-plan learning landscape inside.
- Composition rhythm
- A strict, repeating grid of square glass panels is punctuated by thick vertical steel mullions and horizontal floor plates.
- Style reading
- High-Tech Structural Transparency
- Program
- University building / educational facility
- Perspective
- Exterior Facade
- Discipline
- architecture