PHILOSOPHIA, International Pacific University (環太平洋大学)
Okayama (Higashi-ku), Okayama Prefecture
Sources checked October 2026
- Year
- 2013
- Architect
- Tadao Ando
- Type
- University teaching building
- Access
- University building, which can be visited from the outside only (Okayama tourist office, October 2026)
PHILOSOPHIA is the teaching building Tadao Ando designed for International Pacific University (IPU) in Okayama; it was completed in 2013, after the TOPGUN athletes' hall. The university's chancellor gave him a free hand: Ando created an interior void that gives the feeling of being in nature. The name comes from the Greek philosophia, "love of wisdom".
History
After the TOPGUN athletes' hall, completed in 2009, the university entrusted Tadao Ando with PHILOSOPHIA, finished in February 2013, and then with the HARMONY, INSPIRE and DISCOVERY buildings. When commissioning PHILOSOPHIA, the chancellor asked him to create everything according to his own sensibility.
Architecture
Ando says he thought of the Shizutani School (閑谷学校), an Edo-period school in Okayama where lessons were sometimes given on the veranda: sitting there, one feels time pass and watches nature change over the months. He wanted the building to be a place where students look for themselves and shape themselves, and he created an interior void that gives the impression of being in the midst of nature, in a vast open space. At the entrance, on the ground floor, there is a garden.
Use today
The building holds lecture rooms for 100, set out in tiers, and for 150, multi-purpose classrooms, a 300-seat seminar hall with raked seating, named SOUTHERN CROSS, and a video-conference room. Students also have a lounge, an outdoor plaza and a roof plaza. The name PHILOSOPHIA comes from the Greek philosophia, "love of wisdom".
Visiting
Only the exterior of the building can be visited.
34.73° N, 134.01° E
