The South School Building Gardens

2022/12/28

Image: North Terrace

The terraces on the 7th floor of the South School Building on Mita Campus were installed when the building was reconstructed in 2011. Comprising a south terrace facing Sakurada-dori Avenue and a north terrace with a direct view of Tokyo Tower across the hallway, these gardens provide a space where students can chat, take breaks, and relax on sunny days. With group study rooms nearby where students can engage in discussions for seminar activities, it is also an area where many students gather.

Eleven years after the reconstruction of the South School Building, some of the plants on the terraces showed noticeable signs of wear, leading to a decision to replace them in the spring of 2022.

When planning garden work, the focus is often on creating a "beautiful garden." However, to make a garden look beautiful, a suitable environment and sufficient space are required. Since the 7th-floor terraces of the South School Building receive intense sunlight in the summer and have limited space, making it difficult to meet these conditions, we considered a garden composition from a perspective other than just beauty.

In the spring of 2022, due to overseas travel restrictions caused by the multi-year spread of COVID-19, students were unable to study abroad or travel overseas even if they wanted to. We aimed to create a terrace where students could feel a sense of being "abroad" even just a little, and a garden composition that expressed the unique identity of Keio University.

The newly completed 7th-floor terraces of the South School Building represent the plants of North America and Europe, which Yukichi Fukuzawa visited three times before the Meiji Restoration. Plants from those regions were planted along the routes Fukuzawa took at the time, showcasing the flora that he (might have) seen.

The specific design concepts for the south and north terraces are as follows. South Terrace: In 1860 (Man'en 1), at the age of 25, Yukichi Fukuzawa visited San Francisco—his first overseas destination—as an attendant to Yoshitake Kimura, the Commissioner of the Navy, aboard the warship Kanrin Maru. In 1867 (Keio 3), he traveled to the United States again as a translator for negotiations regarding the receipt of a warship purchased by the Shogunate. The nature of California in San Francisco, his destination, is expressed as a dry garden primarily using succulents such as cacti, aloe, agave, and yucca. North Terrace: In 1862 (Bunkyu 2), at the age of 27, Fukuzawa became a member of a mission sent to negotiate the postponement of the opening of ports and cities and the determination of the border with Sakhalin. He traveled from the Indian Ocean through the Red Sea, crossed the Isthmus of Suez by train, and visited France, Britain, the Netherlands, Prussia, Russia, and Portugal from the Mediterranean over the course of about a year.

The nature of the vast Eurasian continent is expressed through a plant arrangement that gradates from tropical plants to grasses, herbs, useful trees such as fruit trees, and conifers.

(Satoshi Iwabuchi, Office of Facilities and Property Management)