Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower

With schools serving as prime witnesses of one’s campus life, what happens when spatial restrictions eliminate the possibility of a traditional, horizontal layout? For Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower, a 50-storey high-rise school in Japan, compensating the lack of space with height was the only choice.

Designed by Tange Associates, Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower stands amid Tokyo’s distinctive high-rise district of Nishi-Shinjuku. The building caters to three different vocational schools – Tokyo Mode Gakuen, HAL Tokyo, and Shuto Iko.

Schools as transitory spaces where students prepare to face the real world initiated an abstract metaphor that mimicked the nurturing nature of cocoons. In hindsight, a prominently elliptical form that resembles a cocoon can be observed – wrapped in a crisscross web of diagonal lines. Embraced by its incubating form, students are inspired to create, grow, and transform.

Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower features a new typology of educational architecture where this 204-meter tall building is divided into three towers. Due to its limited building footprint, lush greeneries define its base, eventually dilating mid-height to accommodate more than 200 classrooms for its 10,000 student population. To enhance its voluminous silhouette, the tower smoothly tapers as it reaches the top.

Contrary to its curvilinear form, the school maintains a simple floor plan, with rectangular classrooms rotating at 120 degrees. Corridors and multiple open spaces such as a three-storey atrium created a visual connection that offers places for social interaction among students.

Youthful energies dominating the entire school served as the gateway for the revitalization of the neighborhood. Its adjacent, egg-shaped hall with a cogeneration heat and cooling system can be rented by the public. Furthermore, its direct proximity to the Shinjuku Station called for the school’s immediate access to an underground passage.

By combining the fresh visual dynamism offered by the school, not only does Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower redefines the future of educational spaces, but also represents an architecture that becomes one with the urban landscape of Nishi-Shinjuku.