Osaka University Minoh Campus Research and Education Hub

The Minoh Campus is a center for research on world languages, cultures, and societies, and for disseminating Japanese language and culture to the world through international student education. The campus is not only a center for academic exchange to co-create new knowledge through international symposiums and citizen forums; it also serves as a nexus for interaction with the local community through events such as the Minoh International Festival and through public access to the cafeteria and pilotis. Osaka University operates the adjacent municipal library and lifelong learning facilities. These represent Japan’s first attempts at joint university-municipal cooperation in providing services to both students and citizens. Through this effort, citizens are exposed to many foreign-language books, and students can access broader reading materials at the university library. From the planning stage, the university has actively collaborated with the city and local businesses to envision plaza and promenade public spaces, and led the way in developing a new community in the Minoh Semba area. The dynamic architectural form and the plaza, integrated with the pilotis, have yielded a lively student and citizen activity space, garnering solid praise from the general public.