Spatial symbiosis.

This addition to a sprawling Japanese campus breaks down and humanises a large faculty into a series of teaching blocks and communal facilities linked by a meandering walkway.

Shiga Prefecture University occupies an entirely new campus, adjoining Japan's largest freshwater lake, near the foot of Mount Arakami. As is generally the case, a masterplan defined the locations of specific departments, and imposed unifying restrictions on building mass, height and external materials. Tadasu Ohe/Plantec was commissioned to design the Institute of Environmental Science, comprising the faculties of Environmental Planning, Environmental Ecology and Environmental Resources Management. The disciplines studied across these broad headings range from laboratory-based biological sciences to studio-based design, with a shared ambition of finding symbiotic relationships between what have traditionally been regarded as heterogeneous subject areas.

As Ohe points out, the prefix inter-is common to many of the characteristics of his client institution. Shiga Prefecture University's mission is both interdisciplinary and international and Ohe's design responds with a concern for intermediary space; places in which informal relationships can be established, and information can be spontaneously exchanged. The planning strategy for the awkwardly elongated site is deceptively simple. Whereas some of the adjoining faculty buildings are distributed around courtyards, creating homogeneous and monumental external facades, and large but introverted outdoor spaces, Plantec's strategy has been to break down the institute into a series of linear blocks, linked by a meandering, elevated walkway.

Many of the design's apparently irrational features can - for those who subscribe to such principles - be explained in terms of abstract references to local topography and biology. Curves in a circulation route may, indeed, be river-like -referring to the nearby waterways; irregularly raking columns may resemble indigenous bamboo forests. To some extent, however, these interpretations are a distraction, for the strengths of Plantec's work are, as in other projects (AR September 1996), founded in a thorough analysis of the programme in the context of Japanese culture and social conventions, and a skilful manipulation of form and space.

With an area of 14 440 sq m, this is one of Plantec's largest completed buildings, yet its scale is unassuming, and its organisational clarity is exemplary. Following the logic of its client institute's constitution, there is a single, central entrance foyer, recessed (in a manner slightly reminiscent of Le Corbusier's Swiss Pavilion) beneath the elevated spine and principal meeting room of the building complex. The director's (rather grandiose) office suite is expressed as an autonomous pavilion, slid away from the entrance foyer, but enveloped by a unifying, asymmetrically vaulted roof. This gesture recognises the administrative importance of the director, placing him at the interface of the private community and the public realm, yet attempts to distance managerial functions from academic activities, recognising the latter's creative autonomy.

From the central entrance block, all teaching, administrative and social facilities are most easily reached at first floor level. Walking along the meandering corridor, a clear pattern emerges, with a rhythm of transverse teaching wings punctuated by free-standing pavilions containing spaces for seminars and common rooms. The skews in orientation of each block are designed to open up the quite narrow courtyards towards the landscapes beyond the building. Even on a dull winter's day, despite the density of accommodation provided on the institute's restricted site, every part of the complex enjoys ample daylight and external views.

The construction of each teaching wing is necessarily pragmatic, with a concrete frame (inevitably substantial, to resist earthquakes) allowing flexibility in planning. The accommodation is distributed asymmetrically about the corridors, with large classrooms, laboratories and studios opposite narrower offices and tutorial rooms. Finishes inside the building are hard-wearing and utilitarian, with exposed precast concrete panels, cork linings to walls (allowing for pin-ups in studios) and corrugated, galvanised steel ceilings. The architects wisely assumed that students and staff would take possession of their spaces, and make them more comfortable for their own purposes. The limited budget was therefore channelled into a higher standard of finishes in selected areas, such as the seminar-cum-common rooms. In deliberate contrast to the robust and generally repetitive detailing of the complex, a few, carefully chosen elements stand out within these areas, such as the compact but beautiful, curved plywood service core in the first floor common room. Externally, materials are combined from the range prescribed in the campus masterplan - such as the locally manufactured ceramic roofing tiles with finishes familiar from previous projects. Self-coloured textured render is applied externally and in selected internal circulation areas, reinforcing the notion of the internal corridor as an inside-outside street.

In discussing his recent projects, Tadasu Ohe employs the term 'Protocols of Spaces', used to describe the kind of gradation of thresholds between public and private realms, and the (often casual and unpremeditated) reciprocity between form and habitation, which has long been a preoccupation of European architects such as Herman Hertzberger and Gunter Behnisch. The informal use of space takes on a particular importance in the context of Japanese society. Ohe makes much of the apparent etymological similarities between the English words information and informal. 'By adding "in" to form', he notes 'a meaning of "not formal" is given. This suggests that information should primarily be conveyed in informal contexts.'

While one might question the importance Ohe attaches to such etymological exercises, his interest in making places for human interaction is informed by an understanding of the synergies between Japanese and Western traditions, strengthened by Plantec's recent global exposure through exhibitions and projects in the United States and Europe. Contrary to the commonly held view that much of new Japanese architecture is superficial and stylised, Plantec's work shows how eclecticism in principles of architectural organisation is more potent than eclecticism of architectural style.