SVA’s MFA Design has a sweet suite of 4 videos articulating what they’re program is all about and what to expect. (By the way, yesterday’s announcement of the Target prescription bottle as a Design of the Decade was conceived by a student of the program–Deborah Adler–while she was in her second year).
Check out all the videos here.
Israeli office Chyutin Architects have completed a student centre for the University of Haifa, protruding out from the side of Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel.
The building comprises two separate parts: a four-storey building housing the student union and a cantilevered two-storey structure housing the dean’s offices.
Each level of the concrete student union building can be accessed from stepped external terraces created by the fan-shaped plan.
Wooden decking overlooking the valley below covers the terraces of the lower building and roof of the metal-clad dean’s office.
See also: Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem by Chyutin Architects
Photographs are by Amit Giron.
See more buildings for education in our Dezeen archive »
The following information is from the architects:
Haifa University Student Center, Haifa University, Israel
Winning competition, completion 2010
Haifa University is built on the projection of a ridge of Mount Carmel that looks over the bay of this Mediterranean city.
The site chosen for the Student Center building overlooks a deep valley as well as the bay and has a steep topography.
Its upper part abuts the scenic road that extends through the entire campus, ending at the site. In order not to interfere with the view, the building’s roof had to be set below the level of the scenic road.
The design of the building aim to fulfill two main goals: integration of the building into the natural surrounding landscape on one hand, and functional clarity on the other hand.
This clarity was achieved by separating the two main activates: the Dean of Students offices and the student union into two wings with differing characteristics of space, volume and operational organization.
The Dean of Students wing is a two-storey rectangular prism, perpendicular to the lines of the topography and jutting out into the vista. Its roof acts as an extension of the scenic road with an observation deck at its end.
The Students Union wing is a semi buried four- storey stepped structure shaped like a fan with its long glazed façade facing the view. The upper floors contain the offices while the lower floors the public activities.
The garden roofs of the terraced wing blend with the adjacent topography of the mountain.
Between the two wings an external stepped street was designed to enable unroofed descent and external entries into the various floors.
The stepped street is homage to the traditional terraced buildings characteristic of the city of Haifa.
The inner stairway of the building run beneath and parallel to the outer stairways and connects the lobbies of the four floors.
The finishing materials for the building express the relationship between the two wings that comprise it.
The floating Dean’s wing is designed with metal cladding while the earthy terraces walls are built of exposed concrete.
The floating wing roof and the external stepped street leading to the terraced gardens are paved with wooden deck.
The terraces extend underneath the floating wing and vanish into the topography, unifying both wings into a singular comprehensive architectural composition.
Architects – Chyutin Architects Ltd.
Location- Haifa, Israel
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Client- Haifa University
Team- Bracha Chyutin, Michael Chyutin, Ethel Rozenhek, Joseph Perez
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Area- 6200 Sq. M
Project year- 2010
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| Museum by Chyutin Architects | More buildings for education on Dezeen | More architecture on Dezeen |
Dutch practice HVDN architecten have completed this wood and aluminium-clad building to temporarily house a school in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Called Het 4e Gymnasium, the modular building has a square plan constructed around an internal courtyard and features a wooden façade, interrupted by coloured aluminium panels.
The courtyard is the heart of the school providing an easy circulation route between classrooms.
The modular construction method means it can be altered or moved to another location easily.
A permanent school is due for construction within the next five to ten years.
See more buildings for education in our Dezeen archive »
Photographs are by John Lewis Marshall.
The information that follows is from the architects:
het 4e gymnasium, amsterdam
education building houthavens
location
Until recently the area where the school is build was an open, undefined space with scattered placed industrial buildings. Meanwhile, due to problems with the development-zoning plan, the area is temporarily in use. By now it has changed into a lively spot, a “place to be” for the city with several restaurants, artist studios and student housing.
In 2007, it has been decided that the 4th Gymnasium will get a place in this new area that is called the Houthavens. However, it will take some years before the permanent school is built. Until that time, the coming five to ten years, an interim building will be used. To give the building the same qualities as the new housing estate, it is built in a modular system, in order to make it is possible to use it afterwards on several other places in Amsterdam.
courtyard
To create an enclosed inner space in this open area, the program is situated around a court. The sport facilities with a gym and fitness are situated behind the education building. Besides the court, the 4th Gymnasium has an open schoolyard, a sport field and it can use the present beach. This way all the qualities of the Houthavens are very well used. The 4200 m2 building is besides the profession rooms provided with modern supplies, such as a media centre, an auditory and a large auditorium.
The court is the heart of the school. Both in the courtyard and in the circulation space, which is situated adjacent to the court, movement will take place during daytime. In the inner courtyard seats are made which makes the court an perfect sheltered spot for students to meet. The hallways around the court are used to go from one classroom to another. Much attention has been given to the charisma of this circulation space. This space is made very transparent and provided with bay-windows with study spots and sitting areas where students and professors can study or work quietly.
character
The facade has two effects that intensify the character of the building. The plinth is made of flat, coloured aluminium panels and continuously follows through into the facade of the courtyard; the plinth as a foretoken of the colour explosion in the court. The wooden facade has been developed more spatially and in depth and gives the building plasticity. This expressive modular built facade is hard to distinguish from a traditional facade because of a number of innovations, which prevents the monotonous picture of piled up units.
By choosing a relative deep outside facade, it was possible to bring on relief. Under the frame, the facade withdraws 20 cm through which the image of two piled up arcades is created. Also the seams between the modules are hidden; the wooden front parts are built from narrow planks, which are placed vertically and on small distance from each other.
Through the number of artificial seams that arises, the real seams become invisible. At the plinth and the facade of the courtyard, the seams are hidden behind the rhythmic placed coloured aluminium boards of different widths. These creative solutions give the school a permanent and nevertheless dynamic charisma: the solution as the strength of the design.
movable
4e the gymnasium shows that modular building has gone through a large development the past couple of years. It is no longer a synonym to uniformity. The school has both on technically and aesthetic area qualities and a level of finishing which is similar to permanent traditional construction. At the same time the building is very flexible in several aspects. It is movable and can be used where is necessary the coming years. And because of the modular construction it can change easily with changing of the user’s wishes as a result of which the life span of the building is extended.
project information
Design: HVDN architecten
address: gevleweg, amsterdam
design team: albert herder, arie van der neut, stijn de jongh
project team: albert herder, pascal bemelmans, nils van ipenburg, jan-pieter penders
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architectural engineering: jean-marc saurer
cliënt: stadsdeel westerpark amsterdam, esprit-scholengroep, gemeente amsterdam dmo
contractor: ursum bouwgroep bv, Wognum
design-completion: 2008
building costs: € 4.500.000,
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| Educational Centre by Alejandro Muñoz Miranda | West Buckland School by Rundell Associates | Les Lauréades by Lanoire & Courrian |
Emily Pilloton of Project H was one of the speakers at this year’s Autodesk University Keynote, and she delivered a fantastic speech that boldly touched on something we rarely hear designers speak on: Failure, and what we can salvage from that.
I founded Project H Design to take on projects that had social value. Our first project was the Hippo Roller redesign. The Hippo Roller was a device used and manufactured in South Africa to transport water efficiently. We took it on as a partnership with the company, Hippo Roller, to increase the shipping efficiency and lower the pricepoint.
This project was a massive failure on our part. We were sitting in San Francisco, designing for South Africa. We were disconnected from the user, from the manufacturing, from the context and the economics. And ultimately the redesigned version did not get made.
So it was a big failure, but in a way it was a success because we were able to pinpoint what not to do. And to write our future from there, [devising a set of principles, including] “Design with, not for.” We don’t want to just design for clients, we want to design with people and have a shared stake in the process with them. [Also] to start locally and scale globally so we will only take on projects in our own backyard that we understand and are invested in.
Pilloton then described Studio H, the new, and frankly ballsy, project that she and partner Matthew Miller have embarked on: Using design to teach kids, in a very hands-on way, a sort of shop class, in a failing school district in rural Bertie, North Carolina.
We realized really quickly that design for education only goes so far. And that to really bring design impact to public education, we felt like we needed to teach. And that there was something very unique that design could offer as an instructional framework; so we became high school teachers.
…Looking back to the Hippo Roller and where we started, I think the differences are pretty clear. For me design is not just about a product; it should be about a process. And not just about production and consumption but about education. And this is where design has real power. Where we’re able to build creative capital in places where it did not exist before–outside of the design world, by the hands of underestimated individuals.
…For me, design doesn’t get much better than this.
Donald Norman concludes his recent piece for core77 by saying “But beware: We must not lose the wonderful, delightful components of design. The artistic side of design is critical: to provides [sic] objects, interactions and services that delight as well as inform, that are joyful. Designers do need to know more about science and engineering, but without becoming scientists or engineers. We must not lose the special talents of designers to make our lives more pleasurable.” What he might not realize is that we are already losing that creative bent. Our desire to speak the languages of marketing, engineering, and rigorous research have left us neglecting our native tongue, design.
I argue that many young men and women are magnetically pulled toward physical (industrial) design because they have a creative passion to reshape the things around them. We live in an age of magnificent and wonderfully magical experiences. Physical design has a talismanic relationship to those experiences and must fulfill the promise or run the risk of seeming anemic.
We must remember that design is not an academic act and this reminded me of three artists at the polar opposite of much of design thought leadership, but who did much to influence physical design: Umberto Boccioni, Constantin Brancusi, and Isamu Noguchi.
Boccioni (1882-1916) was an artist, sculptor, and a futurist theoretician. Along with F.T. Martinetti he shaped the Futurist manifestos which were ground breaking in their acceptance, celebration, and exaltation of modern life. Working before WWI at the peak of the industrial revolution, the Futurists were fascinated with the new speed of the world around them. They sought to represent what they called Dynamism in their work as exemplified in Boccioni’s famed “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space”, 1913 (above), capturing movement, emotion, meaning and essence in form. Boccioni, as with many of the Futurists, died young during WWI, but their work and ideas went on to influence the future generations they anticipated. See also the architecture of Antonio Sant’Elia which hauntingly predicts the century of architecture that followed his death.
That is not a Philippe Starck tooth brush, it is “Bird in Space” by Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957). From a pure form standpoint, few artists have influenced as many famous designers of the physical world as Brancusi. His fascination with getting form right lead to more than 30 variations of “Bird in Space” done over a 20 year period, mostly in marble or bronze. Of his own work he said, “There are those idiots who define my work as abstract; yet what they call abstract is what is most realistic. What is real is not the appearance, but the idea, the essence of things.”
Of the three, only Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) played with mass produced product, from the famous Noguchi Table to tea cups and radios. The magic is in the pure and beautiful forms of his sculpture. Though only briefly an apprentice of Brancusi, a similar sensitivity and resolution to form can be felt. Be sure to check out the Noguchi Museum on Long Island if you are able. Noguchi’s work spanned a wide breadth from the design of the gardens in the IBM headquarters in Armonk, NY commissioned by Elliot Noyes to the chrome plated portrait of his good friend Buckminster Fuller.
Their long relationship, both as a friendship and a collaborative force, is a case study examining the power of art combined with science examined in Shoji Sadao’s book, “Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi: Best of Friends”. Their individual depth is a reminder that breadth is important, but not at the sacrifice of being able to do something really really well! Or as Brancusi said it, “Work like a slave; command like a king; create like a god.”
Ellen Dissanayake, author of book “Homo Aestheticus” put it well, “each one of us should feel permission and justification for taking the trouble to live our life with care and thought for its quality rather than being helplessly caught up in the reductive and alienating pragmatic imperatives of consumer and efficiency-oriented and “entertain-me” society.” As designers, we need to be at the forefront of that effort.
Spanish architect Julio Barreno has completed an extension to a school in Cádiz, Spain.
Barreno has incorporated a new building into the Azahar school, which has been painted bright green on the interior, with an array of windows of varying sizes punctuating the walls and ceiling.
The new intervention connects to the existing building through a series of interlocking corridors.
The extension comprises an office, staff room, canteen, toilets, a service room and a covered outdoor area.
See all our stories on buildings for education in our Dezeen archive »
The following information is from the architect:
Azahar children’s school in the Prado del Rey, Cádiz.
The original building of this children’s school was located in the centre of the plot which had, at that time, a U- shaped layout; its concave side organizes the main entrance from the street, and between the convex side and the rest of the limits of the plot, it generates the playground for the students’ breaks.
Basically, that was a normal way to put together some classrooms around a court.
The constructive conditions of this building were those of a traditional one.
Thick structural walls made of stones that support a light wooden made roof structure nowadays replaced by a steel one; an insubstantial building.
We had to incorporate a new program that consisted in a secretary’s office, a staff room, a lunch room and a kitchen, toilets and a heating installation room, and also a covered space for the breaks in rainy days.
Given that the new program had to be developed on the ground floor and the only option to make it was using the court behind, that, due to its shape and dimensions, made it difficult to work.
The goal was how to improve the condition of that back court.
In the end, the program is was conceived as wrapped elements or volumes that generate a piece of larger magnitude with a clear continuity from the beginning to the end, trying not to exhaust the available space and giving enough architectural quality to be lived to all the programme.
The new path is a kind of hybrid prosthesis-bypass that, starting in the main entrance, connects the entire new programme arriving to the second corridor.
A new element that is connected to the main artery gets blood irrigation or circulation for this new area.
For that we started doing some previous interventions that prepared the patient to receive the new organ:
Locate the heating room in a central part of the building; organize the definitive entrance from the front schoolyard and make the path lead to the entrance again as a loop, using what we call ‘the second corridor’.
The main handicap was how this concept could be tangibly experienced by the people when the work had finished. That is why the constructive decisions became really important.
The difficulty of working in that back yard made us plan the design as an assembly construction instead of a traditional brick one. It consists of a steel structure coated with enamelled metal plates for the exterior, and pre-made gypsum sheets for the interiors.
These materials are easy to transport and place, they speed up the work at the same time as configuring the construction as a light element with an easy assembly appearance. Rather than built, assembled.
The exterior is designed with a clear and probably hard definition; the interior strives to be a pleasant walk full of different experiences.
Something occurs in every metre intentionally. How the floor and ceiling are manipulated, the layout of the lights and windows and the attractive green coloured walls, make this programmatic optional path a unique architectural experience.
This case of architecture from the past with certain malfunctions that forced us to improve them using our best tool: the Architecture.
On one hand, the surgery-architecture to prepare the body first, and after that the prosthesis-bypass-architecture as a complement and extension; what we obtained is a kind of synergic architecture, something where the interaction between the two elements is more than the sum of the individual effects.
This artificial element is made so as to adapt to the body where they are installed, understanding the context and their purpose, without producing any rejection; in this case it is conceived as an alien in the patient, with a different constructive skill and a specific technique that generates specific identity.
A quality of lightness, transportable, assembly, almost machines…, generated by the constructive systems that distinguish them from the existing body.
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In the end, we have an example where architecture and its techniques save the patient from its illness far from mummifying or letting it die, and all that using strange and untransferable machines, but at the same time, understandable, handy and stimulating.
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Beautiful contemporary prosthesis, said once Manuel Gausa referring to the human prosthesis.
JULIO BARRENO GUTIÉRREZ,
ARCHITECT.
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| Víctor de la Serna y Espina by Julio Barreno | Living Around a Patio by Julio Barreno | More buildings for education on Dezeen |
Foster + Partners have completed the first of a cluster of buildings entirely powered by solar energy at Masdar City, a sustainable urban quarter in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
The Masdar Institute, a facility devoted to sustainable research, is the first of four buildings planned for the site, and will generate more solar energy than it consumes.
The building features a perforated façade made of glass-reinforced concrete coloured with local sand and detailed with patterns commonly found in traditional Islamic architecture.
The development borrows from traditional Arabian urban design, with shaded courtyards and narrow, pedestrian streets.
Announced in 2007, the project was initially billed as the world’s first “zero carbon, zero waste” city, but plans have been scaled back since then. See our story on the announcement of the project.
A solar field within the masterplan provides energy for the building and feeds back what is left to the Abu Dhabi grid.
The following information is from the architects:
Official opening of the Masdar Institute campus, first solar powered building at Masdar City
Under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, His Highness Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Presidential Affairs officially inaugurated the Masdar Institute today, at which the architect Lord Foster was present. The Masdar Institute, devoted to researching sustainability, is the first building to be fully operational within Masdar City.
The masterplan, by Foster + Partners, incorporates lessons which have evolved over centuries of traditional Arabian architecture. The Masdar Institute is the first building of its kind to be powered entirely by renewable solar energy. It will be used as a pilot test bed for the sustainable technologies that will be explored for implementation in future Masdar City buildings. The post graduate students are Masdar City’s first resident community.
A 10 megawatt solar field within the masterplan site provides 60% more energy than is consumed by the Masdar Institute, the remaining energy is fed back to the Abu Dhabi grid. The campus, which consists of a main building, a knowledge centre and students’ quarters, will use significantly less energy and water than average buildings in the UAE.
In particular, the Institute and its facilities use 54 percent less potable water, 51 percent less electricity and are fully powered by solar energy. These reductions are based on comparisons to UAE standard baselines for buildings of similar size and specifications. Around 30 percent of the campus’s energy will be covered by solar panels on the roof, with 75 percent of hot water also being heated by the sun.
The Institute demonstrates the sustainable principles underpinning the overall masterplan. The buildings have self-shading facades and are orientated to provide maximum shade as well as sheltering adjacent buildings and the pedestrian streets below. Over 5,000 square metres of roof mounted photovoltaic installations provide power and additional shading at street level.
Windows in the residential buildings are protected by a contemporary reinterpretation of mashrabiya, a type of latticed projecting oriel window, constructed with sustainably developed, glass-reinforced concrete, coloured with local sand to integrate with its desert context and to minimise maintenance. The perforations for light and shade are based on the patterns found in the traditional architecture of Islam.
The laboratories are unusually flexible for change with ‘plug and play’ services to encourage interdisciplinary research. Horizontal and vertical fins and brise soleil shade the laboratories. These are highly insulated by facades of inflatable cushions, which remain cool to the touch under the most intense desert sun.
Cooling air currents are channelled through the public spaces using a contemporary interpretation of the region’s traditional windtowers. The public spaces are further cooled by green landscaping and water to provide evaporative cooling. Thermal camera tests on-site by Fosters’ research team have already confirmed substantial drops in radiant or ‘felt’ temperatures on campus compared with current practice in central Abu Dhabi.
The laboratories and residential accommodation are supported by a variety of social spaces, including a gymnasium, canteen, café, knowledge centre, majlis – or meeting place – and landscaped areas that extend the civic realm and help to create a new destination within the city. One, two and three-bedroom apartments are housed in low-rise, high-density blocks, which act as a social counterpoint to the educational laboratory environment.
This building is the first of four planned phases that will bring the eventual student population to 600-800. Four residential blocks surround a central laboratory and the Knowledge Centre, the first in a series of additional campus buildings, which will include a mosque, conference hall and sports complex. The second phase is due to start on site by the end of the year to include further laboratories and apartments. The Masdar Institute is accessed by 10 personal rapid transit (PRT) cars that are being run as a pilot project from the City perimeter to the undercroft below the building.
This project signals Abu Dhabi’s commitment to creating an international centre to pioneer sustainable technologies within an environment which is itself carbon neutral.
Lord Foster, said:
“Many have dreamed of a utopian project that would be solar powered. Today’s official opening of the initial stage of the Masdar Institute campus at Masdar City is a first realisation of that quest. Its student community is already active, living and working in their quarters. This community, independent of any power grid, develops a surplus of 60 percent of its own energy needs, processes its waste water on-site which is recycled and pioneers many energy saving concepts. It is a bold experiment which will change and evolve over time – already it houses twelve separate research projects with potential world-wide applications.”
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| Zero-carbon city by Foster + Partners | Masdar City Centre by LAVA | More stories on Foster + Partners |
Dooa Arquitecturas’ school in Spain was our most-clicked story this week so here’s a roundup of all the stories we’ve run on Dezeen about buildings for education. See all the stories »
A good problem to have is when there are tons of jobs and not enough people with the skills to fill them. Nepal had the opposite problem: Villages filled with artisans with a work ethic, but, well, no work to be ethicked. “The problem was simply that they lacked an understanding of what people in the rest of the world wanted to buy,” explains Notre Dame Industrial Design professor Ann-Marie Conrado, “and that’s where we’ve been able to step in and help.” Since 2006, Conrado has been traveling to Nepal with ID students in tow to design globally useful–and saleable–products that Nepalese craftspeople can produce.
The social design work of myself and my industrial design students in Nepal [involves] collaborating with fair trade artisans to design and develop handicraft products in tune with the global marketplace. Working with the Association for Craft Producers, the students spend 10 weeks each summer in Nepal, first learning the handicrafts techniques then designing products that have already resulted in increases not only in sales, but in the number of artisans being employed. While in Nepal, we are also identifying and designing various solutions to social and humanitarian problems including an umbilical cord cutter with a thermoplastic locking mechanism that must be boiled before it will reopen, sterilizing itself for reuse, and a $3 washing machine.
The video below takes a look at the overall process, and you can hit the jump to see some of the collaboration’s most recent prototype samples (currently in the sourcing process).
Back in March, we told you that famed designer Neville Brody had accepted the role of head of the Royal College of Art‘s design and art departments. Though he doesn’t start the new job until the January 1st, the noted rabble-rouser is already stirring things up. Speaking at event this weekend, Brody announced that he plans to change the name of his soon-to-be arm of the educational operation in hopes of updating it to something more modern and, according to him, more applicable to the work that’s going on out in the real world. So his plans are to move from the “Department of Communication Art and Design” to the “Department of Visual Communication and Moving Image.” Mad.co.uk reports that the school itself is saying that it’s yet to decide if they’ll let Brody make the change or not. Here’s a bit:
…the move aims to shift emphasis away from traditional graphic design, to encompass digital media and other disciplines. He says, “It’s to do with transmedia. As well as this, organisations such as the BBC, the British Museum, Tate and others are all now digitising their archives, so there is so much information there.”
He adds, “In the same way that the Industrial Revolution wasn’t the steam revolution, [what we’re going through at the moment] isn’t a digital revolution but a knowledge revolution.”
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