On May 9th, "Poetry in Architecture: Kazunari Sakamoto Architecture Exhibition" was held in Building No. 27 of SCUT. About 100 people attended the opening ceremony, including Professor Kazunari Sakamoto, Professor Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Professor Endo Koichi from Tokyo Institute of Technology, experts from domesitc uniersities, representatives from media such as The Architect, as well as students and teaching staffs from School of Architecture.
Professor Kazunari Sakamoto is a famous Japanese architect and educator, who has designed many residential buildings. He takes the relationship between human and architecture as the center of his design philosophy. His designs and theories were crucial to impact the second golden age of residential buildings in Japan, and his thoughts on the design of small modern houses are quite influential. The exhibition showed models, pictures and videos of Professor Sakamoto’s designs over the past 40 years, which revealed the evolution of his thinking on human and architecture. Among those exhibits, many were full-scale pictures of the exterior facades and indoor scenes of his works, which gave the visitors the feelings of being inside the real house.
The connection between SCUT and Tokyo Institute of Technology has a profound history. More than 80 years ago, when SCUT was setting up the architecture major, it included seven teaching staffs who used to study in Tokyo Institute of Technology. With the advanced education concepts and teaching methods introduced from Japan, the new discipline cultivated a bunch of excellent architects at the time. However, for history reasons, the communication between the two universities was once cut off for a period of time.
In 2013, the Kazuo Shinohara Architecture Exhibition was successfully held in SCUT. Since then, the academic connection between architecture schools from the two universities have recovered, going even further. In recent years, a series of academic exchange activities were held, inspiring faculty and students from both sides. These activities include scholar exchanges, a Chinese-Japanese united student workshop, inviting Japanese specialists to rate SCUT students' architectural works, as well as a architectural project in the city of Changzhou, which is co-designed by Sakamoto Studio and SCUT School of Architecture.