Faced with a dwindling birth rate and a rising elderly population, Japan has been closing schools right and left. But thanks to a group of concerned citizens, architects, and academics, the Hizuchi Elementary School—an exquisite example of Japan’s homegrown brand of Modernism located in a small town on the island of Shikoku—was restored beautifully instead. On November 13, the efforts of the Architectural Consortium that spearheaded the historic building’s salvation will be honored when they are presented with the 2012 World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Completed in the late 1950s, the building was designed by Masatsune Matsumura who trained with one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s disciples, Kameki Tsuchiura. Though Modern in character, the two-story school was made of wood, Japan’s traditional building material of choice. Unlike most of the country’s timber buildings, it incorporated plenty of glass, flooding the interior with daylight rare for a Japanese public school.
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