Dutch firm Levs Architecten used unfired clay bricks from local mines to build the barrel-vaulted structure of this primary school on one of Mali’s vast plains (+ slideshow).
Located in Tanouan Ibi, a village within Mali’s Dogon region, the school complex is made up of several blocks but the main teaching areas are located in one single-storey classroom building.
Levs Architecten positioned three identically sized classrooms in a row along the central axis of this building, then added a pair of sheltered verandas to the two long sides to provide spaces where students can sit down between classes.
“The verandas, equipped with small stone benches, offer pleasant exterior room to the students,” said the architects.
The arched roof structures of these arcades also function as buttresses, supporting the weight of the main vault running along the building’s centre.
The architects enlisted students from a nearby university and members of the local community to help construct the building, using the compressed clay bricks to build walls, floors and roofing.
“The use of these blocks of compressed earth leads to a supple integration into the environment, corresponding to the way almost all Dogon villages fit into the landscape,” they said.
Ceramic pipes puncture the roof of the building, bringing light and ventilation into the classrooms. These can be blocked up during the two-month-long rainy season, during which time a waterproof layer of clay mixed with cement prevents ceilings from leaking.
Each classroom accommodates up to 60 students and there’s also an office and storage closet. Doors and window shutters are painted pale yellow to complement the red tones of the clay.
Here’s a project description from Lev Architecten:
Primary School Tanouan Ibi
The village of Tanouan Ibi is situated on the plain, one hour driving from the main village Koundou in Dogon country, next to the rockface of Bandiagara in Mali (World Cultural Heritage of Humanity, Unesco 1986).
The ensemble is composed of different buildings. The first block is a school of three classes with two verandas and a curved roof. Next to this the installation of the sanitary block is arranged. The enclosure and the planting of trees will follow afterwards. The school is complying with the demands imposed by the government and by the CAP (Centre d’Animation Pédagogique). A classroom has a surface of 7 x 9 m² and offers space to about 60 students. In total the school delivers space to minimally 180 students (3 classrooms) and an office with storage facilities for the director.
The architecture of the school building is a search for a connection with the local traditions of building, of culture and of architecture. Through the use of a newly developed hydraulic-compressed earth block, the building withstands the climate of both hot sunlight and heavy rainfall. The stones are produced on the spot from locally mined clay. Processed in vaults, they provide an optimal cooling climate. The search for connection also implies seeking an expression joining itself to an architecture applying partitions of surfaces, openings and closures, windows and door frames and decorative forms. The use of these blocks of compressed earth, leads to a supple integration into the environment, corresponding to the way almost all Dogon villages fit into the landscape. The language of forms is a clear consequence of functional requirements.
The structure of the school building is unique with two verandas running parallel to the class rooms. The two verandas operate like buttresses to be able to capture the weight of the barrel vaults in the roofs over the classrooms. Next to this, the verandas, equipped with small stone benches, offer pleasant exterior room to the students. The verandas have been built in strokes of blocks of compressed earth. At the entries the blocks follow the tension lines of the arcs, which lead to characteristic openings. The roof and the eaves have been accentuated by an additional layer of stones and by dilatation stones, separating the barrel vaults.
The roof has been covered by a thick layer of 20-30 mm of red earth, mixed with cement in order to achieve a water proof and water resistant layer. The gargoyles, manufactured by the local people named Bozo, guarantee the swift drainage of rainwater. In the roof, custom-made ceramic tubes have been inserted, providingventilation for a pleasant inside climate and allowing daylight through the roof, like a starry sky. During the rainy season (2 months), taking place out of the school period, these tubes can be closed.
The openings in the facades, with their window frames and with blinds, are painted in a fresh and yellow colour. The floor stones have been laid down in a decorative pattern.
Project: Primary School Architects: LEVS architecten, Amsterdam Client: Foundation Dogon Education, Amsterdam Contractor: Enterprise Dara, Sevaré, Mopti and executor Amayoko Tagadiou, in collaboration with students of the Lycée Technique in Sevaré and with the local population of Tanouan Ibi. Commission: 2012 Construction: March – July 2013 Occupancy: October 2013 Site: 2.5 ha Gross Floor: 200 m2 Costs: 45.000 Euro
An all-encompassing timber lattice creates a sheltered gallery around the perimeter of this university library in the South American country of French Guiana by Paris studio RH+ Architecture (+ slideshow).
Located at the heart of the newly constructed Rectorat de Guyane campus in capital city Cayenne, the library was designed by RH+ Architecture as the building that brings together students from all the surrounding teaching departments.
“Our aim is to give to this unique building a proper architecture, identifiable by its volume and its uses,” said the architects.
Constructed from narrow timber slats, the screening outer wall functions as a brise soleil that diffuses light onto the second facade – a concrete wall punctured by dozens of rectangular and square windows.
The open-air gallery is sandwiched between the two facades on all four sides of the building, but widens on the eastern elevation to create a generous entrance lobby that blocks out direct sunlight but allows a breeze to flow through.
“This gallery is an open space, a place where the students meet and pass through, an extra room between inside and outside, sheltered from sun and rain,” said the architects.
Indoor patios divide the interior of the library into two sections, separating public reading rooms and workspaces from staff offices and storage areas.
The main reading room is a large open space beyond the entrance. It includes a dedicated section for periodicals and a temporary exhibition area, plus stairs lead up to study spaces on a mezzanine floor above.
Diffused daylight filters in through the surrounding windows and is complemented by low-hanging lighting pendants suspended from the ceiling.
“The library is a place for studying that is not cut off from the rest of the world; all it takes to see the life of the university campus is to look up when sitting at a reading table and have a look at the traffic and motions in the gallery,” added the architects.
The two-storey administrative section runs along the southern side of the building and has its own separate entrance.
Photograph by Jonathan Cacchia
Photography is by Jean-Michel André, apart from where otherwise indicated.
Here’s a more detailed description from RH+ Architecture:
Construction of the New University Library in Cayenne, French Guiana
A coordinating facility, open to the University
The building of the University Library, located at the heart of the Guyanese University Campus has to be a driving force within the University and contribute to its regional radiance. It is a structuring facility for all the buildings that constitute the Guyanese University Campus: its vocation is to gather books and readers in a unique place dedicated to knowledge, an open and generous place within the University. It is about providing a cultural and documentary service of quality and also materialise the image of the regional community, therefore one of the main issues is to give to the building of the University Library a physical, social and symbolic identity that will impact the one of the neighbourhood and of the city.
Our aim is to give to this unique building for its program and its central position, a proper architecture – identifiable by its volume and its uses – combined to an opening upon the whole University.
A gallery around the building and at the heart of the University
The main architectural choice is the creation of an open peripheral space: unlike a construction cast in one piece with no dialogue with the surrounding, the building is wrapped up with a peripheral space of variable dimensions called “gallery” or peristyle. This gallery is an open space, a place where the students meet and pass through, an extra room between inside and outside, sheltered from sun and rain.
Photograph by Jonathan Cacchia
Additional wealth, the peristyle forms a place to exchange, a public space taken over – and even “the space for the public” – which connects the library to the rest of the University: the library is a place for studying that is not cut off from the rest of the world, all it takes to see the life of the University Campus is to look up when sitting at a reading table and have a look at the traffic and motions in the gallery. This one is made of a filter: a slope of wooden lace carefully placed around a concrete core.
Photograph by Jonathan Cacchia
The wooden filter allows:
» to open the building upon the whole University, » to provide an extra collective space, a transitional space for stimulating sociability, » to bring dim light inside the building, » to offer a building of great unity and create a landmark on the University Campus.
Amazonian environmental quality
The construction industry in general, is a field highly consumer for the primary resources (water, energy, raw material) and great waste producer. Our thought has naturally been brought towards an Amazonian Environmental Quality process, version of the High Environmental Quality certification in tropical and subtropical countries.
The aim is to minimise, during its whole lifespan, how much the building will impact its external environment and the users who will live there during several generations.
The main goal for a library is to be able to read comfortably and, beyond the comfort given by the furniture planning, the essential following criteria have to be taken into account:
» The thermal comfort – the sun protection of the building rests on the principle of the double-skin facade. All the facades and particularly the W/E facades are protected by this wooden filter that forms a very effective brise soleil, a second roof protects the programmatic heart from the solar radius very intense in Guyana (proximity of the Equator).
» The visual comfort – it is a decisive condition: it consists in providing a diffuse light into the room so that any angle with which one takes a book, there are no embarrassing reflections. The project offers a gentle and enveloping light, as a result of the many openings spread over the facade: the generous light first filters by the wooden skin is then released in a homogeneous manner inside the building. With the same logic, the artificial light is regularly distributed in order to avoid any brutal dazzling light or source of reflections and backlighting.
» The acoustic comfort – by implementation of absorbing materials: soundproof ceiling, plaster wall lining for sound insulation of the Mezzanine and the training / exhibition rooms, etc, offer inside calm inviting concentration.
The library is considered as an open space, with wide reception spaces, diverse reading and research spaces and the possibility of lending books. It is also a facility that combines traditional documentation and modern technologies.
The building is composed of 2 parts: one that receives the public and one reserved for administration and its technical rooms. The spaces dedicated to the public are located on the ground floor and on the mezzanine; the ones for the administration on the ground floor and the upper level. Patios and rifts mark this dissociation and improve the lighting at the centre of the building.
On the ground floor: once coming through the gallery – true threshold – the library is reached through a double door entrance space open on a wide entrance hall. Into the hall there are: a waiting area, a reception desk, and in the back the sanitaries (the central position of this desk allows to control at a distance away from the reading room). After going through the access control, the visitor directly reaches the lending desk, the press room, or the temporary exhibition space. The documentary room largely extends in the whole space located behind the reception desk and the temporary exhibition space.
Two patios have been set up in order to bring natural light at the core of the building between the public part and the administrative part, and also in anticipation of an extension requested in the program. The central patio therefore becomes the heart of the connection element organised in a thematic garden.
On the upper floor: for the public part on the mezzanine there are:
» in the documentary room, spaces dedicated to individual consultation: individual work cubicles and research networks; reachable directly from the large central staircase or from a smaller staircase on the side. This configuration offers privileged workplaces that have a clear view over the large room located below.
» a “box” or an autonomous volume that contains the multimedia training room on one side and the exhibition room on the other. The latter is also reachable from a staircase that gives onto the entrance hall.
The entrance to the administrative part is direct from the ground floor, taking the elevator or stairs located on the side of the patio. The offices and the common premises are divided on both sides of the staircase ; they all benefit from natural lighting and views outside and to the patio.
Programme: construction of a new university library Project owner: Rectorat de Guyane Location: Cayenne, Guyane (973) Cost: 5,3 M € HT Net surface: 2 143 m² Delivery: December 2013
Is it a commercial for SCAD’s ID department, or a commercial for Wacom? We don’t care; anytime you take us inside a school’s industrial design department, we’re all eyes and ears. (Advertisers please take note.) Here we get inside SCAD’s Gulfstream Center for Industrial and Furniture Design, where the current generation of students has been graced with Cintiqs aplenty.
To you SCAD ID kids: As someone who clawed my way through an ID program carrying an ArtBin full of markers, pens, pencils, rulers, French curves and geometric templates, I officially hate you. Do you realize that if we wanted to do a rendering in, say, orange, we had to run out and buy markers in a half-dozen shades of orange? And that when you or the store ran out of orange, you were screwed? Enjoy your digital color pickers, you little…
Faceted concretestaircases connect a string of social spaces inside this SOM-designed campus building for The New School in New York, visible outside the building through huge diagonal windows (+ slideshow).
The University Center was designed by architecture firm SOM to provide 35,000 square-metres of teaching facilities and student housing for The New School, allowing the university to pull its activities away from sites around the city and consolidate them onto its Greenwich Village campus.
Conceived as “a campus within a building”, the 16-storey building contains student housing in its nine upper floors, while the seven lower levels accommodate multi-purpose classrooms, design studios, laboratories, an 800-seat auditorium and the main university library.
Social areas, dubbed “sky quads”, are interspersed throughout the building to provide areas where can staff and students can interact, whether relaxing between classes or working on group projects.
Broad staircases create leisurely routes between these spaces. Clad with glass-fibre-reinforced concrete panels, these structures alternate between straight and diagonal trajectories, and some integrate seating areas.
“The University Center transforms the traditional university environment,” said SOM design partner Roger Duffy. “Rather than compartmentalising living and learning spaces, we strategically stacked these functions to create a vertical campus that supports the kind of interdisciplinary learning that has defined The New School since its founding.”
Exterior walls are clad with hand-finished brass shingles, intended to fit in with both the cast-iron facades of the Ladies’ Mile Historic District to the north and the brownstones of the Greenwich Village Historic District to the south and west. These panels also provide solar shading for windows during the daytime.
In addition to the staircases that stretch through the building, SOM added fire-safe staircases that students can use to move quickly between floors. The architects also installed skip-stop elevators that miss out floors during peak hours to speed up movement.
Three dining areas are located on different floors. Other features include bike storage rooms and showers for students and residents, which the university hopes will encourage cycling.
The student housing floors provide accommodation for approximately 600 students and can be accessed via a dedicated entrance on Fifth Avenue. Residents have access to a series of communal facilities in the basement, including a gym, a common room, study areas, art studios, a mailroom and a laundry room.
For nearly a century, The New School has been at the forefront of progressive education, with design and social research driving approaches to studying the issues of our time, from democracy and urbanisation, to technology, sustainability, and globalization. Over the past 15 years, The New School has built on this legacy to grow into a major degree-granting university, with nearly 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students. But, in recent years, as the school outgrew its longtime home in New York’s Greenwich Village and found its real estate holdings spread across the city, from the Financial District to the Upper West Side, this pedagogical model proved challenging to maintain without the physical plant to support it. The University Center both supports and furthers this model through its innovative design and responds to the school’s increasing demand for state-of-the-art, interdisciplinary spaces.
The University Center adds 375,000 square feet of academic and student space to The New School’s Greenwich Village campus. The 16-storey centre houses design studios, laboratories, interdisciplinary classrooms, the main university library, a nine-floor student residence, an 800-seat auditorium, a café, and flexible academic and social spaces for student activity.
Conceived as a campus within a building, the University Center transforms the traditional university environment. Rather than compartmentalise learning, living, dining, and socialising spaces, these functions are situated in a vertical configuration, creating strategic adjacencies and heightening the university’s commitment to interdisciplinary learning. Connections between classrooms, studios, library, cafés, auditorium, and student residences take the form of stacked staircases and “sky quads” that facilitate the chance encounters vital to the cultivation of discussion and debate at The New School.
This innovative interior organisation isexpressed in the exterior of the building. Tightly woven, purpose-built spaces clad in hand-finished brass shingles contrast with the open connective tissue of the stairs and quads visible through a glazed skin. The exterior mediates between the cast-iron facades of the Ladies’ Mile Historic District to the north and the brownstones of the Greenwich Village Historic District to the south and west. Located at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 14th Street, the University Center broadcasts the experimental nature of the school’s new home, creating a dialogue between the campus community, the local neighbourhood, and the city.
A New Kind of Urban Campus
With its 230,000-square-foot, seven-storey campus centre (located in the building’s base) and 130,000-square-foot residential tower, the University Center reimagines the organising elements of a traditional campus, from quads to classrooms and living quarters. Vertical, horizontal, and diagonal campus pathways work together to facilitate movement through the building, while increasing opportunities for interaction among students and faculty from across the university. Academic spaces are flexible and easily adaptable, and can be renovated or reconfigured with no impact on power, data, or lighting to meet changing needs.
Raw finishes and an exposed mechanical system further ensure flexibility in the academic spaces. To bring light into the 30,000-square-foot academic floor plates, clerestory windows line both walls of the main corridor. Horizontal windows and light shelves naturally illuminate classroom ceilings, reducing lighting loads.
Pathways to Discussion and Debate
The University Center’s system of double stairways plays a critical role in the life of the building; it works in conjunction with skip-stop elevators to move large numbers of students vertically through the building. Stacked one above the other, the fire stair is designed for quick circulation, while the broader, open “communicating stair” allows for travel between floors at a more leisurely pace. With faceted walls clad in glass-fibre-reinforced concrete panels, the high-use stairways are a place for chance meetings between students and faculty, and encourage social interaction and interdisciplinary exchange.
Circulation paths that weave vertically, horizontally and diagonally through the building lead into and activate sky quads – interactive spaces that also orient users due to their adjacency to stairways and corridors. Like the “local” and “express” stairs that link them, the sky quads are intended to perform as social spaces, promoting formal and informal encounters between students and faculty, as well as supporting academic and leisure activities. These interactive spaces include student lounge areas, student resource centres with adjacent meeting rooms, study areas, cafés, and pin up spaces for design studios.
To avoid crowded conditions and delays during class-change times in this vertical campus, peak elevator demand is mitigated through the combination of the intuitive system of stairways and a skip-stop elevator system. During peak times, the elevators stop at floors one, four, and six, and stairs are utilised to access the intermediate floors, while at off-peak times, the elevators stop at all floors.
A Commitment to Sustainability and Energy Efficiency
Designed to meet LEED Gold certification from the US Green Building Council, the University Center sets the New York City standard for green technology and building practices with super-efficient LED lights, occupancy sensors, a 265-kilowatt cogeneration plant, and sustainably sourced materials.
Envisioned as a model of energy efficiency, carbon reduction, and sustainability, the building anticipates 31 percent energy savings over a code-compliant school. Both passive and high-tech solutions increase energy efficiency. The envelope of the building is limited to 35 percent glass, which decreases solar heat gain while optimising interior daylighting. The shingled cladding shades the windows up to 20 percent during daylight hours. An ice-storage system, located in the second basement, uses electricity from the power grid during off-peak times to freeze water in a series of chambers; the ice melts during the day, reducing consumption during peak times. Heat recovery wheels recover heat from exhaust air and help heat supply air, saving energy. A green roof, funded in part by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, mitigates the heat-island effect, as well as storm-water runoff, capturing water for both gray-and black-water treatment facilities in the building. Waterless urinals contribute to potable-water conservation. Composting is employed with an in-vessel composter in the cafeteria.
The building serves as a living element of the curriculum, providing on-site training to the next generation of green leaders to students in environmental studies, sustainability management, and urban design. Design elements that demonstrate architectural, structural, mechanical and green building strategies are visible through signage and working exhibits. Back-of-the-house systems have been transformed into instructional spaces for New School students and facilities staff, as well as for professional organisations and unions, who are expected to use the building for hands-on training.
Cross section
Active Design Features
A central stair is the principle design feature in the University Center – a focal point both inside and outside the building. These stairs are intended as the principal means of circulation through the building for the physically able. Through the use of clerestory windows in hallways and on the façade, the University Center provides for daylighting along paths of travel, and the design is organised to encourage walking between destinations, as well as spaces for social interaction. The building provides bike storage rooms and showers to encourage cycling, walking, and running between home and school. The building was recognised by Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg as a model of the successful implementation of the “active design” strategies that are part of New York City’s anti-obesity and health initiatives.
Staircase detail
Student Resources
A co-ed residential tower for more than 600 students occupies floors 8-16 of the University Center. An amenity space on the lower level is accessible only by residents and consists of a large common room, art studios, an exercise facility with gym equipment, soundproof music practice rooms, a study hall, bicycle storage area, mailroom, and laundry room. The University Center has three dining areas: a 280-seat cafeteria on the second floor, an 80-seat library café on the seventh floor, and a 60-seat event café on the lower level off the entrance lobby and auditorium.
Following her first article on her experiences as an architect/designer working with kids, Moa Dickmark offers her insights into the future of pedagogy and learning environments, an issue that raises various questions around the world. Here, she shares her vision for learning spaces in the future, how to go about developing them, and why she believes that students and teachers should have a say and be a part of the development and implementation process.
What do I believe will be the future for education and education facilities?
Einstein, who said something to the effect of “If you can’t explain the problem simply, you don’t understand it well enough,” would not be happy with my answer.
The question seems so simple, but the answer, as most of you probably have noticed, is oh-so complex.
More and more, we see that newly designed schools around the globe is that the majority of architects rely on the teachers and the school administrators’ feedback regarding their work environment as the basis of their designs. Like most of you, I agree that this is an important part of developing a more multi-faceted school then what we have seen in the past.
And it is without a doubt important, as an architect, to listen to and truly understand the needs of the people who use the school spaces on a day to day basis. It is also vital that the architects read between the lines and interpret what the users can’t put into words themselves. We are fluent in the language of space, but we have to remember that not everyone is. This is also important when it comes to developing an environment that not only works better than the ones they had before, but becomes a way to develop and challenge existing ways of teaching and learning.
One thing I have noticed when studying various projects and architecture studios around the globe is that very few of them consult the students on a serious level. Don’t get me wrong, there are some really good projects where they are doing just this (and i will write about them, i can promise you that), but they are few and far between.
There are many reasons for this: the students (kids, tweens, teens) ideas can seem unserious, far fetched and unrealistic. They can also be hard to comprehend, and hard to implement into the design because of a lack of understanding of why the students are asking for whatever they are asking for. And then there is of course the problems that all kids have with adults: that the adults believe that they know best and know what the kids truly need.
Once more we have to keep in mind that not everyone speaks the language of space, but most people, no matter what age, have an opinion about it, and kids are no different. It can be hard for anyone to understand and pinpoint why they think, work, concentrate or come up with better ideas in one area of a learning space, and not in others.
There are various ways to get around this little hurdle—by guiding them through various small workshops where they explore and question everything from existing spaces at the school and the surrounding areas, as well as where they hang out after school and in their homes.
In the beginning, you (as an architect, designer or teacher seeking more insight to the students minds) will probably find it rather tricky—I know I did. But in this way, both you and the students will get a greater understanding of which areas are best suited for which sort of work, what areas work best for them and why, which areas do not work and why, and how you together can develop the areas that don’t work so that the students start using them.
Huge round cushions in shades of mustard yellow and cornflower blue add colour to the pale concrete and timber interior of this kindergarten in western Austria by local studio Bernardo Bader Architects (+ slideshow).
Bernardo Bader Architects designed Kindergarten Susi Weigel for the small mountain town of Bludenz and named it after the late children’s book writer and illustrator Susi Weigel, who lived and worked locally until her death in 1990.
The two-storey building has a raw concrete structure, which is left exposed in parts of the interior. The architects sourced local fir to clad the outer walls and used acacia wood to line interior surfaces.
The entrance to the kindergarten sits within a wide recess at the northern corner of the building, leading into a central lobby where children can hang up their coats and bags.
A row of glass doors forms a second entrance to this space, leading out to a playground lawn at the side of the building, while a wooden staircase provides a clear route up to the first floor.
Spaces are divided up into different zones to create five classes. There are two on the ground floor and three upstairs, each with their own storages areas and toilets.
The ground floor also features a sub-dividable space that functions as a canteen or group activity area, as well as a small office and meeting room.
Glass doors create visibility through the building and are embellished with illustrations from Weigel’s books.
Ready to respond to requests of “Show me the data!” with more than a sad little bar graph? The Mediabistro mothership is now recruiting would-be data visualizers for an online course in infographics that can “engage an audience in your brand, cause, or mission.” Guided by veteran creative director Sascha Mombartz, whose resume includes stints at The New York Times and Google, students will get up to speed with online tools (we’re looking at you Many Eyes) and develop a robust spec for a data visualization. The infographical fun starts February 11th. Learn more here.
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.
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
Your final, graduating presentation at ID school is an intense experience. Unlike academic majors, with industrial design everything you’ve learned in the past few years is embodied in physical objects sitting on pedestals and in drawings pinned to the wall; it is out for all to see, not hidden away in your brain. You likely feel an overwhelming combination of exhaustion and relief from completion. So imagine all of this—and then in strolls Dieter Rams.
That was the lucky experience of last year’s Product Design and Graphic Design grads at Art Center, as the school got design legend Rams not only to make an appearance, but to walk the halls to interact with students and give on-the-fly critiques. Imagine, as one student recounts, that Rams is studying one of your projects and you hear the words “I really like this” come out of his mouth!
Halfway through its second year, Minneapolis College of Art & Design (MCAD)’s Master of Arts in Sustainable Design program continues to represent the leading edge of advanced design studies. This year, four companies—Cascade Designs, Hamilton Beach, Anthro and Rayne Longboards—all had their products analyzed and brainstormed for sustainable redesign.
MCAD’s entirely online program gives students from around the world two years of training in analysis and creativity for sustainable design, from packaging and graphics to products. This past semester, I once again taught collaborative product design, which brings groups of students together across different industries and time zones to redesign consumer products. They start by video-chatting their product tear-down, to perform life-cycle assessment and determine top priorities for sustainability. Groups redesign their products using the Whole Systems and Life-Cycle design method created for the Autodesk Sustainability Workshop. This structures and unifies their ideation over the weeks, which spans energy effectiveness, design for lifetime, materials choices, biomimicry, and persuasive design.
The students did a fantastic job, deftly showing the companies which aspects of their products were the biggest concerns and which needn’t be bothered with, based on both LCA and green certification systems, showing companies a larger context around their products and generating a plethora of great ideas, from subtle tweaks to radical re-envisionings. Below are some samples of their work (click to enlarge in new window/tab).
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