A Place to Remember --- The Reborn Spirits of Banraisha

Banraisha was reconstructed as a new creation. It is now located on the roof terrace of the third floor of the South Building which was completed on March 28, 2005.

Banraisha was originally built annex to "Mita Enzetsu-kan" in 1876 in the east area of Mita Campus, on what is now the Jukukan-kyoku. The wooden one-story building, widely known as "Banraisha", was a kind of social club among teachers, students and alumni. The building was taken down in 1887, and after many years, the name and spirit of the building was revived in a different building located in the south west area of the campus. Unfortunately, this was lost during World War 2, and therefore was rebuilt in the same area in 1951. The rebuilding project was a collaboration of architect Yoshiro Taniguchi, who worked on many buildings related to Keio (such as Keio Yochisha Elementary School building), and sculptor Isamu Noguchi. In building the new Banraisha, the concepts of Keio University was as follows;
-To maintain the original spirit of Banraisha as a place for social interaction and new creation.
-To succeed the extensity and spirit of the collaborative work of architect Yoshiro Taniguchi and sculptor Isamu Noguchi.

The recent relocation was carried on as a collaboration of architect Prof. Kengo Kuma who was in charge of interior designing, and Michel Devigne for landscape designing. Prof. Kuma created a fantastic space by placing white mesh between "Taniguchi" and "Isamu" as a memory filter. Mr. Devigne followed Isamu Noguchi's technique of taking in natural shapes artfully in designs. He designed the rooftop garden by lapping over samples of natural landscape and the original Noguchi garden. This made it possible to succeed not only the shape of the original building, but also the artistic quality and spirit of the works by Yoshiro Taniguchi and Isamu Noguchi, as well as the original concept of Banraisha made by Yukichi Fukuzawa in the Meiji Era.