Kobe College Campus Buildings

Twelve Buildings, an Important Cultural Property since 2014

Kobe College Campus Buildings (神戸女学院, Kobe Jogakuin) stand at 13 Okadayama, Nishinomiya City, Hyogo Prefecture, listed as an Important Cultural Property on 18 September 2014. The listing is as an Important Cultural Property, not a National Treasure, and the owner is the school corporation.

Twelve buildings are listed: the administration building with its auditorium and chapel, the music, library, literature, science, Hoko, social, gymnasium and boiler buildings, Kenwood House, Edgewood House, and the main gate with its lodge.

The Agency records that the college began as a private school opened by American women missionaries in the early Meiji era, moved to its present site in 1933 and built new premises there, designed by the Vories architectural office. The date field gives 1933.

Three Buildings and Two Corridors Counted as One

The way of counting does not match how the name looks.

The administration building, auditorium and chapel are three buildings named together.

The structural field goes further. After reinforced concrete, 1,159.05 square metres, two storeys over a basement, with a roof turret and pantile roofing, it adds a connecting corridor to the literature building: timber, 48.38 square metres, pantiled, with a service gate.

Then it adds a corridor to the science, gymnasium and social buildings: timber and steel frame, 246.10 square metres, pantiled.

Three buildings and two corridors, five things in one record, counted as one. The corridors come to 294.48 square metres between them.

At Kirishima Jingu, three halls joined by their roofs made one structure. Here corridors are counted in as well as buildings.

Unified, and Yet Given Individuality

The assessment is built out of two opposing directions held together.

Each building, the record says, is unified in a Spanish Mission manner outside, in scratch tile and S-shaped pantiles.

And yet, it continues, each is given individuality by an original arrangement of the spaces its function required and by detailing that varies in subtle ways.

It closes that the pursuit of aesthetic balance and attention to practical use are both fully achieved, and the design is excellent.

Unity and individuality; beauty and use. Both pairs are said to hold together.

With the gilt bronze ritual implements, the record turned twice on a concession: gentle yet sharp, fine yet not merely clever. The same shape appears here, applied to a whole group of buildings.

Valued as a Group Rather Than as Buildings

What is assessed reaches beyond the individual building.

Seeking to give form to an ideal of higher education for women, the record says, the college followed a rational campus plan mindful of the lie of the plateau and of the rich natural setting.

It continues that the college is made up of a group of buildings of high completeness and unity, the ground plans included, and is of high value as school architecture of the early Showa period.

The arrangement of the buildings is itself part of the assessment.

At Kirishima Jingu, the halls were recorded as rising in order from the envoy's hall to the main hall. That describes a layout.

At the Yatsusawa power station, nineteen structures stood across fourteen kilometres. That concerns scale. Here the fit with the terrain and the ground plans are given as reasons for the value.

Visiting

The buildings stand at 13 Okadayama, Nishinomiya City, Hyogo Prefecture, owned by the school corporation.

The gate counts as an entry of its own. The main gate with its lodge is reinforced concrete and timber, 103.38 square metres, pantiled, counted as one building.

The boiler house is included as well, a building housing machinery, listed alongside the classrooms.

At the Yatsusawa power station, tunnels and weirs were listed as civil engineering works. Here a single campus runs from classrooms to gate to plant room, all treated together.

The buildings belong to a school corporation and remain in use. Access follows the school's own arrangements. Check before travelling.