Hasta La Ideas

This wooden extension to a school library near Melbourne, by local firm Branch Studio Architects, creates a reading lounge and balcony nestled among the branches of surrounding trees (+ slideshow).

Branch Studio Architects renovated the existing library at St Monica’s College and added a new reading room and decked terrace, which extends over a previously unused courtyard.

Pupils enter the library through a doorway clad in dark wood, which opens into an existing corridor and leads to a lounge area featuring angular sofas and benches that wrap around supporting columns.

Beside the entrance, a multi-purpose reception desk also incorporates borrowing facilities, an audiovisual hot desk and digital access to the library catalogue.

Sliding doors can be pulled back to open this space to an outdoor courtyard featuring planted beds and a tree surrounded by wooden structures that create seating areas.

On the back wall of the courtyard is a mural painted by architect Brad Wray that references the colours and shapes found in the landscape of a nearby national park.

The natural orange tones of the mural and the contrasting green grass in the courtyard informed the colours used to upholster some of the plywood furnishings.

“A carefully chosen colour and material palette was selected to reflect and complement the courtyard artwork, engaging with the Australian outback, an important icon of the St Monica’s College philosophy,” explained Wray.

Pupils can ascend from the lounge to the library’s main reference area using a wide set of stairs designed to evoke the monumental Spanish Steps in Rome.

“The book stacks are placed on the upper level of the library in reference to the books being the Trinita dei Monti Church at the top of the Spanish steps and the external courtyard as the Piazza di Spagna at the bottom of the steps,” said Wray.

This staircase incorporates spaces for pupils to sit and read, conduct meetings or use the built-in photocopying facilities.

It leads to an area containing the bookshelves and a series of work spaces that can be divided by drawing translucent curtains around them.

An existing wall was removed to create the entrance to the treetop reading lounge, which culminates in a balcony providing views towards the nearby countryside.

The exterior of the new addition is clad in black-stained plywood with natural timber battens creating a vertical contrast that references the nearby gum trees.

Plywood used throughout the interior provides continuity with the library’s facade and creates robust, hard-wearing surfaces that will be able to resist the scuffs and marks of daily life in a school.

Zig-zagging LED strip lights in the extension echo the shape of the bookshelves and the lights are also applied to highlight existing trusses in the main downstairs reading area.

Photography is by Nils Koenning.

Here’s some more information from the architects:

St Monica’s College Library, Epping, Australia

The traditional school library is becoming more digitalised and the all mighty physical book becoming more and more scarce. The St Monica’s College Library fit-out new extension consists of two parts: a renovation to the existing school library and a new reading lounge & deck extension. The project celebrates and elaborates on the traditions of the school & civic library through a series of key ideas, or ‘chapters’, that were translated into architectural interventions. These architectural interventions were collectively composed and narrated as a single ‘story’.

1. Entry Threshold – Inspired by the entry to the ‘Secret Garden’, the Entry Threshold is conceived as a singular volume and is the main entry to the library. The threshold protrudes slightly into the existing school corridor like a portal into another world.

2. Garden Foyer – Two large glass sliding doors open up the library to the courtyard where an existing internal corridor is used to segregate the courtyard from the library completely. The internal library spaces are now engaged with the external courtyard, creating an indoor/outdoor reading area.

3. The ‘Multi-desk’ – A singular multi-purpose, multi-use, “Swiss army” reception desk, catering for borrowing, audio-visual hot-desk, library catalogue and a seat.

4. The Spanish Steps – An existing 1400mm change in levels between the lower & upper floors of the library was previously connected by two awkward, narrow stairs. This has been redefined as a series of platforms that promote impromptu spaces for discussion, meeting, photocopying, reading, viewing and traversing between the two levels of the library.

5. Tree-top reading lounge – A new reading lounge punches through an existing brick wall on level one and extends out over a previously unused courtyard. The reading lounge is specifically orientated & configured to offer views towards the nearby Darebin creek green belt and wetlands.

Flexible & translucent staff areas encourage teacher and student engagement. Through the use of a curtain divider, a more transparent & sometimes blurred visual & spatial barrier is created. Similarly, curtains are used as informal screening devises to create flexible teaching & study areas. When a private class is required curtains may be pulled shut. At other times the curtains can be pulled open for the area to be used as a large open study area during lunchtime and after school.

A ‘grand’ reading-room area for larger class and study groups, sits in contrast with a series of ‘nook’ areas where students can hide-away, immerse themselves in the library and read alone. The library contains a series of Forum spaces for smaller, more intimate student reading, study groups and area for one-on-one teaching. The library supports both traditional reading and digitalised plug-in learning.

Painted dark grey and lined with strip LED lights, a series of existing zig-zag trusses are celebrated, creating a improved sense of space which previously was cluttered & segregated from the upper level of the library.

The book stacks are placed on the upper level of the library in reference to the books being the ‘Trinita dei Monti Church’ at the top of the Spanish steps and the external courtyard as the ‘Piazza di Spagna’ at the bottom of the steps.

A carefully chosen colour and material palette was selected to reflect and complement the courtyard artwork, engaging with the Australian outback, an important icon of the St Monica’s college philosophy.

Moments of the colour orange are used throughout in fabrics, paint finishes and bench tops to link back to the external courtyard artwork. The courtyard artwork or mural was designed and painted by myself [Brad Wray] with the help of my wife – Ellie Farrell. It is an abstraction of the Bungle Bungle national park viewed from an aerial perspective. It is the second time now I have been fortunate enough to simultaneously take on the roles of both architect and artist on a project. The painting was completed out-of-hours, after work and on weekends over a 3-month period.

Plywood was used generously throughout for its durability and practicality. The schoolyard is a place where wear and tear is common and plywood is a material whereby scratches and scuffs could add to the patina of the material. Often the embedded grain within the plywood ceiling, wall and joinery panels bare reflection with some of the forms and textures outside on the nearby grey gums.

Vertical natural timber battens, in collaboration with black stained plywood cladding, promote a visual connection with internal and external spaces. The shadow-clad external plywood cladding references the black and grey tones of the nearby grey-gums. Vertical, Victorian ash timber battens reference the vertical nature of the tall grey gums nearby.

The extension is almost completely hidden from outside of school grounds. Situated amongst the tree canopies with only a small glimpse to be seen from a nearby walking track, the new building fabric merges with its surroundings.

Internal loose furniture was custom designed for the project and made by a local furniture maker. A series of pendant lights highlight and promote both specific and non-specific areas of engagement within the library.

The project was constructed in two parts. One used a traditional means of contract with a building contractor undertaking the extension part of the works. Whilst the internal works or fit-out, which includes everything from all joinery to the Spanish steps were impressively undertaken by St Monica’s College’s own internal ‘maintenance’ team. It has been rewarding to learn from library staff, the amount of borrowing has significantly increased due the opening of the new library.

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Ahead of the opening of the Designs of the Year 2014 exhibition tomorrow, here’s a look back at one of the standout projects – a floating school on a Nigerian lagoon by architecture studio NLÉ (+ slideshow).

NLÉ, the studio founded by Nigerian-born architect Kunlé Adeyemi, developed the Makoko Floating School as a prototype for building in African regions that have little or no permanent infrastructure, thanks to unpredictable water levels that cause regular flooding.

Half-building, half-boat, the floating structure provides teaching facilities for the slum district of Makoko, a former fishing village in Lagos where over 100,000 people live in houses on stilts. Prior to this the community had just one English-speaking primary school that regularly found itself under water.

“In many ways, Makoko epitomises the most critical challenges posed by urbanisation and climate change in coastal Africa. At the same time, it also inspires possible solutions and alternatives to the invasive culture of land reclamation,” said the architects.

NLÉ developed a structure that can accommodate up to 100 adults, even in bad weather conditions. It is primarily used as a school, but can also function as an events space, a clinic or a market, depending on the needs of the community.

Built by a team of local residents, the structure was put together using wooden offcuts from a nearby sawmill and locally grown bamboo.

A triangular profile allows the building to accommodate three storeys whilst remaining stable over the water. “It is an ideal shape for a floating object on water due to its relatively low centre of gravity, which provides stability and balance even in heavy winds,” said the designers.

The lower level houses a space for play, while a sub-dividable space on the middle floor accommodates up to four classrooms and the upper level contains a small group workshop. A staircase on one side connects the three levels.

Here’s the project description from NLE:

Makoko Floating School

Makoko Floating School is a prototype structure that addresses physical and social needs in view of the growing challenges of climate change in an urbanising African context. It is a movable ‘building’ or ‘watercraft’ currently located in the aquatic community of Makoko in the lagoon heart of Africa’s second most populous city – Lagos, Nigeria. It is a floating structure that adapts to the tidal changes and varying water levels, making it invulnerable to flooding and storm surges. It is designed to use renewable energy, to recycle organic waste and to harvest rainwater.

An estimated 100,000 people reside in Makoko in housing units built on stilts. Yet the community has no roads, no land and no formal infrastructure to support its day-to-day survival. In many ways, Makoko epitomises the most critical challenges posed by urbanisation and climate change in coastal Africa. At the same time, it also inspires possible solutions and alternatives to the invasive culture of land reclamation.

Until now Makoko has been served by one English-speaking primary school, built on uneven reclaimed land, surrounded by constantly changing waters. Like many homes in Makoko, this has rendered the primary school building structurally precarious and susceptible to recurrent flooding. Sadly, the inability of the building to effectively withstand the impact of increased rainfall and flooding has frequently threatened local children’s access to their basic need – the opportunity of education.

In response to this and in close collaboration with the Makoko community, NLÉ has developed a prototype floating structure that will serve primarily as a school, whilst being scalable and adaptable for other uses, such as a community hub, health clinic, market, entertainment centre or housing. The prototype’s versatile structure is a safe and economical floating triangular frame that allows flexibility for customisation and completion based on specific needs and capacities.

The 220m A-frame or pyramid building is 10m high with a 10m x 10m base. It is an ideal shape for a floating object on water due to its relatively low centre of gravity, which provides stability and balance even in heavy winds. It also has a total capacity to safely support a hundred adults, even in extreme weather conditions.

The building has three levels. The 1st level is an open play area for school breaks and assembly, which also serves as a community space during after hours. The 2nd level is an enclosed space for two to four classrooms, providing enough space for sixty to a hundred pupils. A staircase on the side connects the open play area, the classrooms and a semi enclosed workshop space on the 3rd level.

The simple yet innovative structure adheres to ideal standards of sustainable development with its inclusive technologies for renewable energy, waste reduction, water and sewage treatment as well as the promotion of low-carbon transport. Furthermore a team of eight Makoko-based builders constructed it using eco-friendly, locally sourced bamboo and wood procured from a local sawmill.

Construction began in September 2012 with floatation mock-ups and testing. Recycled empty plastic barrels found abundantly in Lagos were used for the building’s buoyancy system, which consists of 16 wooden modules, each containing 16 barrels. The modules were assembled on the water, creating the platform that provides buoyancy for the building and its users. Once this was assembled, construction of the A-frame followed and was completed by March 2013. Makoko Floating School is now in regular use by the community as a social, cultural and economic centre and will soon welcome its first pupils for use as a primary school.

The project was initiated, designed and built by NLÉ in collaboration with the Makoko Waterfront Community, in Lagos State. The project was initially self-funded by NLÉ and later received research funds from Heinrich Boll Stiftung as well as funds for its construction from the UNDP/Federal Ministry of Environment Africa Adaptation Programme (AAP).

Makoko Floating School is a ‘prototype’ building structure for NLÉ’s proposed ‘Lagos Water Communities Project’ and its ‘African Water Cities’ research project.

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Dutch firm Korteknie Stuhlmacher Architecten covered the facade of this school in Rotterdam with black and white tiles arranged in patterns that reference typical Dutch interior decoration (+ slideshow).

The new A.J. Schreuderschool was designed by Korteknie Stuhlmacher Architecten for children with learning disabilities, and the tiled decoration was added to give the exterior spaces a more domestic and familiar appearance.

“The pattern is based on classical patterns used in many traditional Dutch houses for various purposes, usually entrances, and kitchens,” architect Mechthild Stuhlmacher told Dezeen.

“We used the tiles on the exterior as an ornament but also to make the outdoor spaces more room-like, as if we are referring to an interior,” she added.

The architects also invited pupils to create unique colourful tiles that are incorporated into the facade near the entrance.

“We proposed the involvement of the pupils, because we were impressed by the artistic production and the creativity of the mentally handicapped children who happen to be taught by a very engaged, creative art teacher,” said Stuhlmacher. “The black and white pattern has been designed as a rather powerful framework to integrate the pupil’s work in a larger whole.”

The school is situated in the postwar neighbourhood of Lombardijen and was laid out to establish a stronger relationship with its surroundings than the majority of its 1960s-built neighbours.

Two connected buildings housing the classrooms and a large sports hall are positioned on opposite corners of the plot, creating a pair of outdoor spaces that are partly enclosed by the two blocks.

The courtyard facing the street at the front of the school acts as a playground and public square leading to the main entrance.

At the back of the school is a larger space used as a garden for play and teaching activities centred on nature and sustainability.

“The two outdoor spaces have a very different character – one is very open to the neighbourhood while the enclosed garden on the other side is much more private,” explained Stuhlmacher. “For pupils with a mental handicap both qualities are essential, and the school can divide groups according to the abilities of the children.”

Inside the main school building, the reception area connects to a corridor that leads past labs dedicated to skills including art, music and computing, towards classrooms that face the street or the garden.

On the other side of the reception is the entrance to the sports hall, which features windows at floor level and a roof supported by chunky timber beams.

Circulation spaces at the centre of the school feature large skylights that introduce natural light to both levels of the building.

Materials throughout have been chosen for their muted tones and to help reduce noise levels in line with the needs of many pupils for a neutral and tranquil environment.

Photography is by Luuk Kramer.

Here’s a project description from the architects:

A.J. Schreuderschool

On the site of a former technical school in Rotterdam Lombardijen a new school for children with learning disabilities has been built. Lombardijen is a typical post-war neighbourhood consisting of a repetitive mix of low-rise and high-rise blocks of flats.

The neighbourhood is urgently in need of technical, spatial and social transformation. This especially applies to the public space; as in many neighbourhoods of the 1960s the area between the building blocks is rather large and unarticulated, poorly maintained and hardly used. The problem is partly caused by the existing architecture that fails to establish a mutual relationship between indoor and outdoor space. The project for the new school attempts to rethink this relationship while engaging with the existing context.

The project consists of two loosely connected volumes, a two storey compact building block, which is the actual school building, and a double sports hall. Both volumes are placed in the far corners of the generously dimensioned plot. The buildings are complemented by two semi-enclosed outdoor spaces. Facing the Spinozaweg there is an open, paved and rather urban square that will be used as playground.

On the other side there will be a large, intensively planted, enclosed garden. This garden offers space for recreation and play and serves as an outdoor ‘classroom’ for the subject ‘green’ that will be part of the curriculum in the new school. The design of the façades, entrances and the plinth supports the desired close relationship between inside and outside.

The curriculum focuses on three main subjects: living, working and leisure. These subjects are taught in specific classrooms, such as the living room, the kitchen and the art studio. These classrooms are situated on the ground floor facing the street and establish, quite literally, the connection between the school and the outside world.

The rest of the school, with all regular classrooms facing the garden, has a more private character. Specific attention has been paid to the design of the spacious circulation area in the centre of the building. Generous roof lights and voids allow for daylight to reach the ground floor, while respecting the need of many of the pupils for a calm environment avoiding stimuli such as noise, too vivid colours and forms.

Within the budgetary limits of public school buildings we designed a sustainable structure with flexible and timeless plans and a low energy installation; in the future the school can easily be adjusted to the needs of other types of education. The sports hall combines a regular steel structure with an expressive timber roof and appears as a completely timber-lined, roof-lit space. The plinth around the building has been clad with ceramic tiles in different black and white patterns made by the remarkably artistic pupils.

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Opinion: watching the demolition of her own elementary school, Alexandra Lange reflects on the increasingly generic design of schools, museums and playgrounds that resign children to “places where all they can learn are the tasks we set them.”

They tore down my elementary school last week. The demolition of childhood memories is enough to make anyone nostalgic, but in this case, there was something more. My school, Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was designed by Josep Lluís Sert: Modernist master, former Harvard Graduate School of Design dean, and architect of the superb Peabody Terrace apartments just across the street. I didn’t know Sert designed my school until last year, but the building had its effects. When I started kindergarten in 1977, the building was just six years old. I may have lived in a Victorian house, but I learned and played in a thoroughly contemporary environment, with red Tectum walls, folding retractable partitions and clerestory light.

Although I had not been back inside since my family moved in 1982, I could still draw a rough plan from memory. The kindergarten classrooms, each with its own outdoor space, lined up along Putnam Avenue. The light-filled central hall, an indoor thoroughfare entered from the street or from the playground behind, that linked auditorium, gym, cafeteria, classes. The recessed, mouth-like entrance, echoing with noise before the doors opened in the morning. The sense of progression as you aged up, from front to back, downstairs to upstairs. The architectural meaning was clear: protective of the little ones, offering more territory as you grew older. This was a building for children with a cast-in-place pedagogy.

Like the similarly demolished Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago, the exterior suggested something of the fortress, but the interior was warm and light, shaped by its program. But a change in technology and teaching methods – the new project brief includes breakout spaces, computer labs and ENO Boards – need not have doomed a building based on a grid of concrete columns and floors. The photographs I took of the King School in its half-demolished state suggested a possible future as well: the rhythmic frame as a set ready to be recycled, a new school on an old base that utilised its embodied energy rather than eliminating it.

Looking at the rendering posted on the construction fence, then back up at the exposed reinforcing bars, I see a loss greater than my experience, or for Modernism. I see another space for children made more generic, our mania for safety and uniformity consigning children to a world of tan boxes tricked out with primary-coloured objects. How can you learn about the world in spaces without character?

Across Boston, a number of other Sert buildings have been (or are in the process of being) renovated, including Peabody Terrace, the Boston University School of Law and an office building at 130 Bishop Allen Drive. Harvard has plans to renovate his Holyoke Center, and has hired Hopkins Architects to do the job: in the future, it will be a central meeting point for the university’s diverse schools, students and programs.

Why was the fate of the King School different? According to advocates, reuse was a hard sell. Like so many of its Brutalist brethren, the school was not popular in its immediate neighbourhood, despite that neighbourhood being a striking collection of postwar low- and high-rise buildings. In focusing on the building’s past and pedigree, preservationists may have neglected to offer a vision of how the building might be born again and added to. Perkins Eastman’s feasibility report gives short shrift to this option, accentuating the negative.

If the new design filled me with interest, joy or curiosity I might be less sad, but as a collection of tan boxes arranged along a circulation spine and presented to the community with an arsenal of contextual photos, it makes me feel nothing. Like so many other spaces for children – schools, museums, playgrounds – it looks like the box that the toys come in. Fine when the creative child can turn that box into a toy. Less interesting when the adults decide which way is up and which colours connote the most fun. In such spaces, the engagement and learning happens at the level of graphics, touchscreens, what the educators like to call “manipulatives.” The buildings themselves don’t speak, don’t teach, they merely house while complying with all requirements. There’s little to be absorbed from experience and I doubt anyone will be drawing the plan, or mentally resting her cheek against the Tectum, 36 years on.

When Rafael Viñoly updated the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, he added curvaceous shapes and primary colours to the outside, the better to signify child-like wonder. But inside the new rooms were boxy and plain, the better to accommodate a rotating series of exhibits and birthday parties. The architectural excitement is all decoration; the inside is a barn. By contrast, Cambridge Seven Associates’s New England Aquarium, an exact contemporary of the King School, turns the reason why you go to an aquarium (to see the fish) into the organising principle for the building’s architecture. It’s also a box, but one textured at key points to indicate the ocean wonders inside; a box that leads you, tank by tank, on a scenographic journey from sea lions to penguins to more fish than you’ve ever seen in one place. All you have to do to experience the aquarium is walk, at your own pace, up the ramp that wraps a multi-story tank. No need for IMAX, no need to read (if you’re under 6) the underwater experience is right there in the dark, intriguing space.

Playgrounds offer another journey from the specific to the generic. Susan G. Solomon’s book American Playgrounds describes the high points of playground experimentation in the postwar period, from Richard Dattner’s Adventure Playgrounds in Central Park (some recently restored and updated) to Isamu Noguchi’s experiments with sculptural dreamscapes. Architects today are interested in making playgrounds again and many interesting experiments can be found in the book Playground Design by Michelle Galindo (2012). But Solomon describes a decade-by-decade constriction of spatial ambition as the result of fears over safety and budget. The model playground became a black, rubberised surface fitted with fixed, mass-produced equipment. You can see the same equipment, often made by Kompan, in Brooklyn and in Copenhagen. Where’s the adventure in that? What’s missing is loose parts, idiosyncratic parts, architecture that has ideas about learning and wants to help kids figure things out. Brooklyn Boulders, a growing chain of indoor climbing spaces for adults and children, seems to have hit on a contemporary formula at their sites in Brooklyn, Somerville and San Francisco.

What is at stake here not a question of Modernity (and indeed, not even all the Modern architecture historians in Cambridge got excited about saving the King School). Rather, it is respect for children as sensitive consumers of space. I read in the built work of Cambridge Seven Associates, Sert and Noguchi that children deserve the best design can give them, even if it might be scary for a moment (that dark aquarium) or strange until you climb it (those artificial mountains). The sanding down, the rounding off, the demolition of the obdurate, makes our children’s worlds more boring places, places where all they can learn are the tasks we set them. Amy F. Ogata’s recent book Designing the Creative Child describes the myriad ways middle-class ambitions are translated into the toys we buy and the spaces we make for kids inside our homes. But such ambitions also need to be translated into the public sphere.

Look again at the King School, structure laid bare. What better exercise than to say, “Here’s a set of concrete floors and concrete columns, kids. What do you want to put in your new school?”

Alexandra Lange is a New York-based architecture and design critic. She is a Loeb Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design for academic year 2013-2014 and is the author of Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities as well as the e-book The Dot-Com City: Silicon Valley Urbanism.

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in spaces without character?” appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch firm Wiel Arets Architects has completed an academic campus in Rotterdam‘s Hoogvliet district comprising six concrete and glass buildings with subtle surface patterns designed to resemble ivy (+ slideshow).

Wiel Arets Architects used fritted glass and textured concrete to suggest traces of climbing plants on the pared-down walls and windows of Campus Hoogvliet – a school and college campus providing housing and teaching for students between the ages of 12 and 27 years.

All six buildings sit over the asphalt ground surface that defines the limits of the campus. These include a sports centre, an arts school, a safety training academy, a secondary school, a business academy and a housing block for up to 100 residents.

A glass fence surrounds every building and is fritted with the abstracted ivy pattern to maintain privacy for students. The same motif also embellishes the ground floor windows of each building.

A scaled-up version of the pattern reoccurs within each of the buildings, where exposed concrete walls are broken up by stripy concrete reliefs.

Each building can be identified by a different colour, which can be spotted on the glass balustrades that run alongside each staircase, but they are otherwise all identical in materials and finishes.

“Unity defines the campus and its clustered buildings, which are therefore experienced as continuous architecture,” said the architects.

The largest of the buildings is the sports centre that contains a 300-seat multi-purpose hall. The ground floor of this structure is raised up by a storey to make room for car parking, while an outdoor basketball court is located on the roof.

Custom-designed seating is dotted around the site, including white terrazzo benches and circular planters containing Japanese maple trees. There’s also a running track, bicycle storage areas and a campus-wide lighting system that illuminates outdoor areas after dark.

Photography is by Jan Bitter.

Here’s a project description from Wiel Arets Architects:

WAA complete construction on Campus Hoogvliet in Rotterdam

Campus Hoogvliet is a cluster of six buildings that together compose one academic and socially focused campus, located just outside of Rotterdam. These six new buildings – a sports centre, an art studio, a safety academy, 100 residential units within one building, and two schools – have been plugged into a programmed tarmac that communicates the campus’ boundary, and includes custom-designed seating, a running track, and other place-making denotations.

The campus’ immediate surroundings are characterised by mid-twentieth century housing developments – which were prolifically constructed during its booming period of post-WWII growth – and the campus aims to rectify the social and cultural deterioration that coupled the demolition of this once historic village.

A glass ‘fence’ – equal in height to each ground floor facade – surrounds every building. Every fence is fritted with an abstracted, pixilated image of ivy, so as to create an exterior terrace that is both private and transparent. The ground floors of each building are fritted with the same pattern, and all exterior glass was made with a kiss print, which introduces texture to each facade.

A white ring surrounds every building and denotes the transition from public tarmac to private terrace, each programmed with bike parking and play areas. All six buildings share a similar procession of entry: spaces compress in volume when transitioning from the campus’ tarmac toward the glass-fenced terraces; decompress when entering each building’s ground floor communal spaces; and compress again when traversing circulation paths toward upper levels.

The sports centre’s tribune seats 300 and overlooks its multi-purpose and double height activity space, which functions as an exercise area for students and is also available for local events and sports teams. This sports centre – the largest of the campus’ six buildings – has been raised one level in order to accommodate a 80 space parking garage on its ground floor; this introduces a ‘zero-zero’ level to the campus, which compounds the notion of ‘interiority’. Additional parking for 200 aligns with and compliments the campus’s boundary, so as to not disturb its highly trafficked pedestrian areas. An outdoor basketball court occupies the roof of the sports centre’s ground floor; it is perpendicular to a monumental staircase that allows for views over the sprawling campus below.

Load-bearing facades with open corners – combined with concrete cores for stability, and non-polished concrete floor slabs under tension – structure each building. Cores are notable for their concrete relief, derived from an enlarged pattern of the fritted ivy, adjacent to which are each building’s shifting sets of staircases. Balustrades are finished with coloured glass, and each building has a unique colour, to impart a visual identity within each.

Custom-designed white terrazzo seating dots the campus’ programmed tarmac, and Japanese Maples set in custom-designed black terrazzo planters dot each fenced terrace. The entirety of the programmed tarmac, and every terrace, are illuminated at night to ensure the surrounding community’s cohesiveness. Unity defines the campus and its clustered buildings, which are therefore experienced as continuous architecture.

Location: Lengweg, 3192 BM Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Typology: Educational, Housing, Retail, School, Sport
Size: 41.100 m2
Date of design: 2007-2009
Date of completion: 2014

Project team: Wiel Arets, Bettina Kraus, Joris van den Hoogen, Jos Beekhuijzen, Mai Henriksen
Collaborators: Jochem Homminga, Joost Korver, Marie Morin, Julius Klatte, Olivier Brinckman, Sjoerd Wilbers, Raymond van Sabben, Benine Dekker, Maron Vondeling, Anne-Marie Diderich
Client: Woonbron
Consultants: ABT BV, Wetering Raadgevende Ingenieurs BV

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