Konan Girls' Junior and Senior High School Special Classroom Building

A 4-storey block beside the administration building

The Konan Girls' Junior and Senior High School Special Classroom Building (甲南女子中学校・高等学校特別棟) in Morikitacho, Higashinada Ward, Kobe, is a 4-storey reinforced-concrete school building designed by Murano Tōgo and completed in 1968; it was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on April 3, 2020 (number 28-0732).

It adjoins the east side of the administration building and is reached from the main entrance along a covered walkway. The building was renovated in 2012.

Playing with window widths

At first glance the Konan Girls' Junior and Senior High School Special Classroom Building is a plain grid of identical windows. The west front is where the variation comes in: the windows change width between the upper and lower floors, so that the whole elevation reads as a stepped silhouette like the character 凸, and a horizontal canopy juts out across the middle.

Exterior stairs stand at both ends, and the parapets of their landings are laid in brick. The brick against the concrete is enough to break the repetition without disturbing the rhythm of the windows.

Size and registration

The Konan Girls' Junior and Senior High School Special Classroom Building has a building area of 526 m². The Agency for Cultural Affairs records its date as 1968 with a renovation in 2012, and it was registered for its contribution to the historic landscape.

Visiting

The building is in use for classes and is not open. The grounds are closed to the public, and since it stands inside the campus its elevations are hard to see from the street.

The school's history and directions to the campus are on the Konan Girls' Junior and Senior High School page.