This is a closed school converted into a science experience center. The school building is still there, the classrooms are still there, the corridors are still there — only the contents changed, into a place where anyone can approach science easily.
Its value as a venue rests entirely on the word school. For adults a school is a nostalgic space: the width of the corridor, the height of the classroom door, the sound of the floor are all things the body remembers. Hold a party in a space like that and people relax without deciding to — and that cannot be bought in any newly built venue, because it does not come from design. It comes from each guest's own memory.
The whole building can be taken: Arena 762 sqm (200 seated or standing), Multi Purpose Room 158 sqm (40 seated, 60 standing), and three Community Rooms for 12 to 16 people. A main hall for two hundred plus several classroom-sized breakout rooms — that structure is simply the structure of a school, and it takes to breakout workshops almost naturally.
Two kinds of requirement suit it particularly. First, training and team building: the breakout rooms are already there and the science content is itself the program. Second, events that include families — here the children genuinely have something to do rather than being parked in a corner. It is in Suginami, outside the sightseeing districts, so guests feel they have gone to a Tokyo where people actually live.