the kyoto university of foreign studies, or kufs, is located in the heart of kyoto city just ten minutes by car from jr kyoto station in the northwest direction. currently, a total of 12 aging buildings are standing densely in the campus site while half of them do not meet current earthquake resistance standards in japan. so, a proposal competition was held to reconstruct one of the oldest ones, which is the building no4. since the building was located in the center of the campus, japanese firm C+A?s reconstruction of building no4 revived the whole campus. 

image © hiroshi tanigawa
 
 
although any planning outside the building was not requested, C+A envisioned a long-span campus masterplan to update other aging buildings and at the same time create more activity flows between them. careful observation and detailed research was carried out by entering every single room available in the campus to study the behavior of students and teachers on how they spend their time in the university on different occasions. 
image © daici ano
 
 
as a result to the master planning and studies, a transparent ?learning commons? space was placed on the ground level (first floor + mezzanine) where activities are visible to anyone. administration office including career center was lifted up onto the second floor while a combination of classrooms and the flexible learning area is distributed among the third to fifth floors. classrooms of various sizes and several types of flexible lea...