Hasta La Ideas

This university building in Melbourne by Australian architects Lyons is covered in brightly coloured scales (+ slideshow).

Above: photograph by John Gollings

Lyons used a pixellated image of the surrounding buildings to create a map of colour across the exterior. ”The building derives its identity from its surroundings,” Lyons architect Nicholas Ling told Dezeen. “It’s a chameleon and a mirror.”

Above: photograph by John Gollings

As part of technology and design university RMIT, the Swanston Academic Building provides learning spaces for the college of business, right in the centre of Melbourne.

Above: photograph by John Gollings

The walls have both curved and folded surfaces, creating a series of jagged edges that give the building an uneven profile. ”In the same spirit as the facade, the undulating walls were a result of the building being ‘affected and influenced’ physically by its surrounds,” said Ling.

Above: photograph by John Gollings

At ten storeys, the architects describe the building as a “vertical campus,” where double-height lobbies are intended to function as social spaces that take the place of the traditional college green.

Above: photograph by John Gollings

Most of these spaces feature vivid colours or pronounced geometric patterns. “The profile of each space and its character – including colour, materials, type of furniture and details – is informed by the landmark it faces,” said Ling.

The building contains a variety of flexible learning spaces, from 300 person lecture theatres to 30 person classrooms.

Above: photograph by Dianna Snape

Lyons also recently completed a scientific research centre in Canberra for another university.

Above: photograph by John Gollings

See all our stories about Lyons »

Here’s some extra information from Lyons:

A new student experience for Gen Z and beyond – RMIT University’s new Swanston Academic Building Project

Active student learning spaces are a key emerging trend in both University and TAFE campuses.

Above: photograph by John Gollings

While many universities have designed progressive teaching and learning spaces at the ‘experimental’ end of their teaching and learning activities, RMIT has recently completed its new Swanston Academic Building (SAB) which incorporates nearly 100 new spaces designed on new learning concepts.

Above: photograph by John Gollings

This major new building will provide the University with significant new capability into the future, as well as significantly enhancing the student experience within its city campus.

The brief for the project developed by RMIT, includes 85 learning spaces, 11 informal student ‘portals’, accommodation for 800 staff from the Colleges of Business, all within a footprint of approximately 35,000m2.

Integral to the teaching and learning brief is to achieve high sustainability benchmarks – including both substantive energy reductions, and improved amenity.

Above: photograph by John Gollings

A further key objective is for the new building to reinforce RMIT’s position and character as an urban campus – a campus in the city and of the city.

Above: photograph by John Gollings

The design creates a ‘vertical campus’, rather than a multi-level teaching building, where the journey through the building is connected by student and staff social spaces, or ‘portals’.

Above: photograph by Dianna Snape

This concept is characterised by a series of double height social spaces, dispersed throughout the building as a main focal point on each floor, providing space for informal student learning.

They are characterised by their connection to natural light and air, variety of furniture, and a marked difference to other teaching spaces.

Above: photograph by John Gollings

This is envisaged to encourage and support the type of peer-to-peer learning traditionally associated with the ‘college lawn’.

Above: photograph by John Gollings

The portals provide students with a place for informal learning, social interaction access to technology, and respite from the formal academic program in a varied array of designs and locations throughout the building.

Above: photograph by John Gollings

A diverse range of 85 new learning spaces are provided in the SAB, ranging from 30 to 360 person capacity, each responding to the teaching and learning needs identified by the University through an innovative joint timetabling project run by RMIT and Lyons.

Above: photograph by John Gollings

The building design responds to a wide range of class sizes and a diverse mix of teaching modes; didactic, collaborative, discursive, project-based group work, team teaching and workplace simulation.

Above: site plan – click above for larger image

Above: basement plan – click above for larger image

Above: ground floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: first floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: second floor plan – click above for larger image

Above: cross section – click above for larger image

Above: long section – click above for larger image

Above: Swanson Street east elevation – click above for larger image

The post RMIT Swanston Academic Building
by Lyons appeared first on Dezeen.

With each passing day of my design education it seems that I arrive at more questions than answers. A lot of what you get out of school is asking questions, more importantly the right kinds of questions. However sometimes good ol’ advice is more beneficial and rewarding then asking questions.

On the Core77 Boards there is a thread titled “If I Knew Then What I Know Now.” Before I came to school I glanced at it and really paid no attention to it. Now that I’m in my sophomore year this thread has become somewhat of a credo for me, a manifesto if you will. The thread encapsulates the design education of multiple members each with their own words of wisdom. The advice is comprehensive, covering studio life, what skills employers are looking for, and even the rule for how young grad students can date.

I urge anyone who is currently in school or applying to read this thread thoroughly. It will give you a sense of purpose and instill a level of motivation that you didn’t know you had in you. Read the thread in its entirety, even reading the debates between people who don’t agree on the same piece of advice (take your own stand on it). Try not to listen to one person’s advice but a diverse group of people.

Students working in MIT’s Design Studio

The thread has become somewhat static lately so if other talented and experienced designers would like to share their advice please post!

(more…)

World Architecture Festival 2012: architect Paul Williams of Stanton Williams tells Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs why his team designed the new campus for London art and design college Central Saint Martins as “a blank canvas” where different disciplines could “take form and ownership”, in this movie we filmed at the World Architecture Festival last month.

The project won the award in the higher education and research category and brings together all the disparate faculties of the school into a single campus constructed in and around a Victorian granary and two former transit sheds at King’s Cross.

Williams describes how they used unfinished materials such as raw timber and concrete for the walls and surfaces. ”When you’re creating an art college, the one thing you’re not looking to do is impose a strong architectural identity,” he says. “It’s the actual disciplines that should create the identity.”

An internal street runs through the centre of the buildings, creating an exhibition area between the studios of each department. “We have created much more shared space, so there is less space in ownership of departments,” says Williams. “It is space that can be used by all of the disciplines.”

The architect also discusses the importance of flexibility, which will allow the campus to “morph” in the future. ”A lot of the areas and walls that are built are soft and they can be knocked down and reconfigured,” he says. “The principle of the building is it is a stage for transformation.”

Read more about the campus for Central Saint Martins in our earlier story, or see more stories about Stanton Williams, including our interview with Alan Stanton about the Stirling Prize-winning Sainsbury Laboratory.

We’ve filmed a series of interviews with award winners at the World Architecture Festival. See all the movies we’ve published so far, including our interview with architect Chris Wilkinson about the World Building of the Year.

See all our stories about WAF 2012 »

Photography is by Hufton + Crow.

The post An art college should be “a blank canvas”
– Paul Williams on Central Saint Martins appeared first on Dezeen.

A louvred wooden X-shape filled with staircases connects the two laboratory wings of this scientific research centre by architects Lyons at the Australian National University in Canberra (+ slideshow).

Located on the university’s Acton campus, the building brings together two existing biological research schools into a single facility with hexagonal windows and splashes of bright green on its facade.

“Both of the existing schools had very successful research and teaching programmes and the challenge was to bring those programmes together in the one building, maintaining their separate identities while forming a new entity,” said architect Carey Lyons. “The building’s two wings provide the separate identities, while the cross-stair with its meeting rooms binds them together.”

The wonky cross stretches across the west facade of the U-shaped building, creating two overlapping staircases that screen collaborative working areas and meeting spaces.

In the two wings, laboratories are arranged in rows and filled with modular furniture and equipment, allowing them to be easily reorganised.

Offices are positioned opposite the laboratories and each floor has two rows of windows; one row at desk height and a second row at ceiling level.

Lyons has worked on a number of educational and research buildings, including an institute of technology, a medical school and a college administration building.

See more architecture by Lyons or more projects in Australia.

Photography is by Dianna Snape.

Here’s a project description from Lyons:

Biosciences Research Building
Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

Constructing Collaboration

The primary idea for this Bioscience Research building is to join together the super-performative needs of a contemporary laboratory research building, with a conceptual expression of collaboration.

The site for the building is at the centre of the Australian National University, a research focused campus located within Australia’s capital city Canberra. The purpose of the building is to bring together two previous disparate research schools into a single integrated and collaborative environment.

The two laboratory wings are joined together by a broad scissor or ‘X’ stair, which also forms the primary approach and address to the building. This X stair functionally connects the schools together across the three levels of the building, and is also an expressive architectural figure of collaboration and connectivity. The form of the stair is also derived from design operations on the X chromosome, which is a key focus for the research disciplines working within the building.

Internally the X stair, through a series of spatial inflections, creates social and collaborative space within its figure. At its lower levels it contains spaces for collaboration between staff and research students, at the centre of the X is located a tea room and informal seating, and at the top of the stairs is located spaces for collaborative work between researchers. The stair figure is clad in timber shading devices, which ameliorate the late afternoon sun.

The two laboratory wings contain a series of high performance and flexible laboratory environments which can be readily adapted to meet rapidly changing research needs.

All laboratory furniture and equipment is both modular and ‘loose fit’ allowing scientists to adapt their laboratories to suit their current activities. Offices and work areas for researchers are located immediately adjacent to the laboratories within high ceiling spaces that operate as either air conditioned or fully naturally ventilated spaces depending on the external environmental conditions.

The researcher spaces are contained within a building envelope constructed out of a modular precast concrete system, based on the idea of a cellular structure. This system creates a ‘field’ of windows both externally and internally, with the interior having two windows per level – one at desk height for views, and one at a higher level for bringing natural light deeply into the work area.

The plan figure of the building has been developed within the context of an overall precinct masterplan, with a number of other buildings currently under construction. The diagonal geometry of the plan articulates a key pedestrian route through the centre of the campus, and also creates a courtyard space within the building form that inflects outwards towards the campus. At the end of the courtyard is another expressed staircase, interconnecting each of the bio-containment laboratory levels.

Site plan – click above for larger image

Ground floor plan – click above for larger image

First floor plan – click above for larger image

West elevation – click above for larger image

North elevation – click above for larger image

East elevation – click above for larger image

South elevation – click above for larger image

The post Biosciences Research Building
by Lyons appeared first on Dezeen.

French designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec have designed all the furniture for the remodelled Faculty of Humanities at Københavns Universitet in Copenhagen, which is due to reopen in January.

“This is quite an interesting situation historically,” Ronan Bouroullec told Dezeen. “Since the last century, whenever they build a school or university in Denmark they ask a designer to design the chairs for that space.”

The brief specified a wooden chair in the hope of creating a more homely environment to tackle the number of students who leave before completing their studies. “There is a big problem in universities that there are a lot of students that do not stay at school, it’s quite problematic in Europe,” Bouroullec explained. “The general aim of the project is to try to keep students in school so the idea was to do a chair which could be maybe more domestic than a contract chair.”

The chairs needed to be low-cost, strong, “sensual”, stackable, and quick to develop and produce. “Very quickly we had this intuition that for both reasons – comfort and probably price – we could cut the shell in two parts,” recounts Bouroullec.

“This would create a very interesting aesthetic because it will create a bridge, so we do not have to fix the shell on a structure.” Instead, four legs are attached directly to the ridge under the seat where the two sides of the shell join.

The resulting seat is more flexible than a shell made in one piece. The A-shaped legs mean the chairs stack neatly in high piles and the cost was kept down. ”The chair is priced to be around 150 euros so almost the same as a plastic chair,” he says.

The range was expanded from there to include around 15 typologies in oak and beech for the department’s meeting rooms, offices, libraries and classrooms.

It’ll also be available from Danish design brand Hay, which is showing the collection at design fair Orgatec in Cologne this week.

This is not the prolific designers’ first wooden chair – they launched two seats for Magis in Milan this year alongside one with a shell divided into four pieces for Mattiazzi, and their celebrated Steelwood chair can often be spotted in the photos of interior projects on Dezeen. See all our stories about Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec.

Dezeen filmed two interviews with Ronan Bouroullec at Clerkenwell Design Week this summer – one about the use of colour in their Pico tiles and another on their new monograph.

Orgatec continues at Koelnmesse in Cologne until 27 October.

The post Bouroullec Collection by Ronan and Erwan
Bouroullec for Hay appeared first on Dezeen.