News: Portuguese brothers Manuel and Francisco Aires Mateus have won a competition to design a new school of architecture in the Belgian city of Tournai, with plans for a complex featuring a house-shaped entrance void.
Located within the city’s historic quarter, the project will involve renovating an eighteenth-century hospital to accommodate administrative services as well as converting two industrial buildings to create space for classrooms and a library.
The architects also plan to demolish some existing buildings, making room for a tree-lined courtyard and a new structure that will serve as the spine of the complex.
Weaving between the renovated blocks, the new building will link different departments and provide a distinctive entrance. According to the architects, it will make contact with the existing brick volumes in as few places as possible.
“The design evokes the existing iconography in the architectural heritage of Tournai,” said the architects.
“Its geometry causes various urban plazas and produces a large interior space which will house all academic activities, as well as establishing a close collaboration with the community,” they added.
This movie by Mexican film agency Nation tours the school of art, design and architecture that Japanese architect Tadao Ando completed last year at the University of Monterrey in Mexico.
The Centro Roberto Garza Sada, also known as the Gate of Creation, is a chunky concrete block designed by Tadao Ando with triangular slices across its two sides to create the appearance of a twisted structure.
Rectangular voids at each end expose stairwells and an open-air amphitheatre, while entrances are located beneath the shelter of the building’s raised underside.
The six-storey interior is organised so that each floor accommodates different departments, encompassing digital facilities, visual arts, textiles, photography, model-making and fashion. Overall, the building accommodates studios and teaching rooms for 300 students.
British firm John McAslan + Partners has converted a stone barn into a library and added a contrasting stained timber extension, as part of its redevelopment of a university campus in Cumbria, England (+ slideshow).
During the first stage of a masterplan for updating the University of Cumbria‘s Ambleside Campus, John McAslan + Partners refurbished the traditional Cumbrian barn, which was constructed in 1929 and had until recently been used as a student union.
Informed by the campus’s setting in a National Park, the architects endeavoured to minimise alterations to the existing barn’s stone exterior and added an extension with a pitched roof and large windows overlooking a new courtyard.
“The reconfiguration, a contemporary interpretation of Cumbrian vernacular, respects the original stone fabric of the building while enhancing the character and quality of the space,” said the architects.
Timber beams supporting the roof of the barn were exposed to increase the interior volume and contribute to a spacious upper storey that is filled with light from the redesigned windows.
The single-storey addition with its steeply sloping roof is clad in black-stained timber that provides a contrast to the stone barn and surrounding buildings.
“John McAslan + Partners’ design for the new library and student hub respects the original stone fabric of the building, while enhancing the character and quality of the space,” said the university’s head of facilities management, Stephen Bloye.
Full-height windows brighten the interior of the cafeteria and allow views across the landscaped courtyard towards the rest of the campus.
New stone floors used throughout the ground floor of the library and the cafeteria unite the interiors of the two spaces.
Pale wood covering the walls and ceiling of the cafeteria recurs in fitted furniture including rounded booths on the library’s ground floor and the cladding of the circulation areas.
As part of the ongoing masterplan the architects will continue to repair and refurbish other buildings around the university campus and improve landscaping and connections around the site.
Library and student hub, Ambleside Campus, University of Cumbria
A newly opened library and student hub marks the completion of the first phase of the practice’s masterplan for the Ambleside Campus at the University of Cumbria.
Stephen Bloye, Head of Facilities Management, University of Cumbria, comments: “John McAslan + Partners’ design for the new library and student hub respects the original stone fabric of the building, while enhancing the character and quality of the space.”
The existing timber roof structure has been exposed, greatly increasing the building’s overall volume. In addition, new stone floors have been installed and windows redesigned to maximise natural light, creating an attractive working environment and improve energy use.
Generous glazing provides views out onto the adjacent courtyard space, one of the new landscape spaces created as part of the campus redevelopment, and beyond over the mature landscape of the campus.
The reanimated university campus will comprise Business Enterprise and Development, Outdoor Studies, Environmental Sciences and the National School of Forestry, creating a 21st-century university campus within the National Park.
Phase One of the masterplan has also delivered improved access and services infrastructure across the campus, including disability access for 75% of all teaching accommodation, induction loop systems, illuminated pedestrian routes, disabled parking provision and level access into and within all buildings where possible.
The University’s revitalised buildings will accommodate community events and lectures out of hours, enhancing the opportunities for adult learning in the community.
American architect Steven Holl has completed his new building for the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland, where its geometric matte-glass exterior stands in contrast to the decorative sandstone facade of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterpiece across the street (+ slideshow).
Steven Holl‘s Reid Building provides modern studios for the Glasgow School of Art and was designed to forge “a symbiotic relationship” with the historic campus building completed by Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh a decade century earlier.
The new five-storey-high building replaces the school’s Newbery Tower and Foulis Building, but wraps around the three-storey stone Assembly Building, which houses the school’s popular student union.
One of the main aims of the design was to bring as much natural light as possible into the building, so Holl created three cylindrical shafts of light that he calls “Driven Voids”, which stretch right down from the roof to the basement.
Spaces inside the building were also arranged with respect to their lighting requirements, so the majority of studios and workshops are positioned along the northern edge of the plan, where they will receive more consistent levels of daylight.
A central network of staircases and ramps extends around, beside and across the three lightwells, helping students to orientate themselves within the building.
These link all of the floors, including the two basement levels, and lead up from the lobby, exhibition galleries and seminar rooms of the ground floor to workshops, studios, project rooms and a lecture room elsewhere in the building.
Artist and former Glasgow School of Art student Martin Boyce was commissioned by the architects to design a piece to mark the entrance to the new building, and his screen of painted steel and glass vines hangs down from the ceiling.
Describing the piece as “a flourish of coloured glass catching and projecting washes of light,” Holl explained: “We see this colour in positive contrast to the original colours of Mackintosh and an inspiration to students and the community.”
The architects are also planting a terrace outside the building, which is intended to resemble the grassy machair plains that are particular to parts of the British Isles.
Here’s some more information from the Glasgow School of Art:
The Reid Building Glasgow, United Kingdom (2009 – 2014)
Following an Estates Review that established, with the exception of the Mackintosh building, the School’s Garnethill estate of some nine separate buildings was no longer fit for purpose, a plan was developed with the aspiration to create a more focused campus of facilities to provide the GSA with world class spaces.
The core principle of Phase 1 of the campus plan was to create a new, purpose-built academic building housing a broad range of studios and teaching facilities for the School of Design, as well as workshops, lecture facilities, communal student areas and exhibition spaces for the School as a whole, and a new visitor centre.
Steven Holl Architects of New York, in association with Glasgow-based JM Architects and Arup Engineering, were selected in September 2009 to design and deliver the Phase 1 building, which will be called the Reid Building in honour of Dame Seona Reid who stood down as Director of the GSA in the summer of 2013, to sit fittingly opposite the category ‘A’ listed Mackintosh building.
The development (including costs incurred in the re-housing of the School of Design during the re-build) has been funded by a grant from the Scottish Funding Council. The development has been delivered on time and on budget.
The Design
The Reid Building, which replaces the Newbery Tower and Foulis Building, is in complementary contrast to Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art (1899 – 1909) – forging a symbiotic relation in which each structure heightens the integral qualities of the other. A thin translucent materiality in considered contrast to the masonry of the Mackintosh building – volumes of light which express the school’s activity in the urban fabric embodying a forward-looking life for the arts.
This project’s unique interior and exterior forces on the design are the catalysts for creating a new 21st century model for the art school. Working simultaneously from the inside out – engaging the functional needs and psychological desires of the programme – and the outside in – making connections to the city campus and relating to the Mackintosh building opposite – the design embodies the school’s aspirations in the city’s fabric.
Mackintosh’s amazing manipulation of the building section for light in inventive ways has inspired our approach towards a plan of volumes in different light. The studio/workshop is the basic building block of the building. Spaces have been located not only to reflect their interdependent relationships but also their varying needs for natural light. Studios are positioned on the north facade with large inclined north facing glazing to maximise access to the desirable high quality diffuse north light. Spaces that do not have a requirement for the same quality of natural light, such as the refectory and offices, are located on the south facade where access to sunlight can be balanced with the occupants needs and the thermal performance of the space through application of shading.
“Driven Voids of light” allow for the integration of structure, spatial modulation and light. The “Driven Void” light shafts deliver natural light through the depth of the building providing direct connectivity with the outside world through the changing intensity and colour of the sky. In addition, they provide vertical circulation through the building, eliminating the need for air conditioning.
Along the south elevation, at the same height as the Mackintosh main studios, a landscape loggia in the form of a Machair gives the school an exterior social core open to the city. The natural vegetation with some stonework routes the water into a small recycling water pond which will reflect dappled sunlight onto the ceiling inside.
A “Circuit of Connection” throughout the new GSA encourages the ‘creative abrasion’ across and between departments that is central to the workings of the school. The open circuit of stepped ramps links all major spaces – lobby, exhibition space, project spaces, lecture theatre, seminar rooms, studios, workshops and green terraces for informal gatherings and exhibitions.
The cylindrical shape of this university building on the outskirts of Dutch town Wageningen is designed by BDG Architects to optimise the usable floor space inside and reduce energy loss through the facade (+ slideshow).
Stoas Vilentum is the only institution in The Netherlands dedicated to teaching agriculture and ecology, and the Zwolle office of Dutch firm BDG Architects wanted to reflect its sustainable focus through the building’s shape, materials and interior details.
“For the basis of the building [we] chose a cylindrical shape because of the favourable ratio of surface area relative to the area of the facade,” said the architects, adding: “This minimises energy loss through the building’s skin.”
Located on a site surrounded by grass and trees, the building is slightly raised to make the most of its position in the landscaped campus.
“The interaction between architecture and landscape is intensified by placing the building on a green mound,” the architects explained. “The campus will develop in the future more into a surrounding where education, working and living come together.”
Balconies wrap around sections of the facade and transition into long staircases that connect the building’s three storeys.
A staircase ascends through the circular atrium at the centre of the building, which is filled with natural light from large round skylights.
The architects planned the interior spaces to accommodate the university’s flexible learning practices, with labs, offices and classrooms located around the circumference of the building, and spaces for informal activities in the open areas at the centre.
Angled green columns punctuate the communal spaces around the edge of the stairwell on each floor, in some places surrounding glass-walled cylindrical meeting rooms.
Students and staff can also congregate on giant beanbags clustered throughout the atrium to conduct impromptu meetings or relax during free time.
Swivel desk chairs lining long curving work surfaces provide an alternative place to study with views across the surrounding campus.
Stoas Vilentum is a small academic institution where research and teaching focus on the green sector, and where educational specialists in the fields of agriculture and ecology are trained.
The educational philosophy of the institution is based on ‘ecological intelligence’. The design of BDG Architects is a translation of this philosophy and is conceived in close cooperation with the future users.
The building is designed as a pavilion in the green surroundings of the campus. The interaction between architecture and landscape is intensified by placing the building on a green mound. The campus will develop in the future more into a surrounding were education, working and living come together. The new building for the Stoas Vilentum is an important step in this development, which is emphasized by placing the building on this mound.
The three floors of the building are linked to each other by a central atrium in which lazy stairs connects the different floors. The balance between open learning areas, intimate study places and classrooms is designed to serve the educational philosophy of the university optimal. The spaces are divides into the so called ‘nesting areas’- rational spaces with established functions such as labs, offices and classrooms -, and ‘cave areas’- open spaces where different (spontaneous) activities can take place.
Beautiful prints on the walls make these areas recognisable. On different places in the building are ecological structures used, for example on these prints, which refer to the education that is given in which the relation between humans and nature and ecology is placed central.
For the basis of the building BDG Architects choose a cylindrical shape, because of the favourable ratio of surface area relative to the area of the façade. This minimises energy loss through the building’s skin. The cylindrical shape also represents the equivalence between tutors and students. The clear shape makes it into a firm and attractive building, well placed in its surroundings and with an pleasant interior for the students and tutors.
Architect: BDG Architects Zwolle Name project: Stoas Vilentum Wageningen Address: Mansholtlaan 18, 6708 PA Wageningen, the Netherlands
Irish architects O’Donnell + Tuomey mapped sight lines along the narrow streets of the London School of Economics campus to generate the faceted red brick structure of the university‘s new student centre (+ slideshow).
The Saw Swee Hock Student Centre consolidates all of the university’s student facilities under one roof at the LSE‘s historic Aldwych campus. Designed by architects Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey, the seven-storey-high building has an irregular faceted shape informed by the angular geometries of its site and surroundings.
Walls angle inwards along the eastern facade to give the centre a recessed public entrance that lines up with approaching streets to the north, south and east.
“The public space at the threshold of the student union, on axis with St Clement’s Lane, creates a place of exchange; a spatial bowtie that intertwines circulation routes, splices visual connections between internal and external movement, and pulls pedestrian street life into and up the building,” said the architects.
“Like a Japanese puzzle, our design is carefully assembled to make one coherent volume from a complex set of interdependent component parts,” they added.
Red brick was used to construct the walls of the building using a typical flemish bond. In some places the material forms solid walls, while in others it creates perforated screens across windows.
“The perforated planes are constructed from a single leaf of brickwork with spaces in the flemish bond pattern to allow light to both infiltrate the interior spaces and filtrate out at night to create a pattern effect,” said the architects.
Spaces within the building accommodate a variety of functions, including an events venue, a bar, a cafe, a gym and dance studios. There are also prayer rooms, offices and multimedia facilities.
Designed to resemble a “lived-in warehouse”, the building has an exposed structure that combines steel columns and trusses with concrete floor slabs.
Floor plates differ in shape and size on different floors. Angular stairwells are positioned at three corners of the building, while a spiral staircase is positioned near the entrance.
“Space flows freely in horizontal plan and vertical section, with stairs gently twisting and slowly turning to create a variety of diagonal break-out spaces at landings and crossings throughout the building,” said the architects.
An assortment of windows and skylights ensure that each corridor receives daylight, and an events hall in the basement can be naturally lit though a row of clerestory windows.
The building will open next month, but its surrounding landscaping is not set to be finished until the summer.
Here’s a project description from O’Donnell+Tuomey Architects:
Saw Swee Hock Student Centre, London School of Economics
Client Brief
The brief was to bring student facilities together under one roof. The multi-functional building includes a venue, pub, learning café, media, prayer, offices, gym, careers, dance studio and social spaces. The brief asked for the “best student building in the UK” and had the aspiration for BREEAM Excellent rating. The design achieved BREEAM Outstanding.
Planning Constraints
The site lies within the Strand Conservation Area. The context was complex and the site was restricted by surrounding building lines. Specifications were closely monitored by Westminster planners, who supported the ambition for a contemporary design integrated with its setting. Throughout the building process, the planners maintained a commitment to the enduring quality of carefully crafted construction.
Street Life
The site is located at the knuckle-point convergence of narrow streets that characterise the LSE city centre campus. The faceted facade operates with respect to the Rights of Light Envelope and is tailored to lines of sight, to be viewed from street corner perspectives and to make visual connections between internal and external circulation. The brick skin is cut along fold lines to form large areas of glazing, framing views. Analysis of the context has influenced the first principles of a site specific architectural design.
Embodiment
The building is designed to embody the dynamic character of a contemporary Student Centre. The complex geometries of the site provided a starting point for a lively arrangement of irregular floor plates, each particular to its function. Space flows freely in plan and section, with stairs turning to create meeting places at every level.
Construction, Colour and Atmosphere
London is a city of bricks. The building is clad with bricks, with each brick offset from the next in an open work pattern, creating dappled daylight inside and glowing like a lattice lantern at night.
The building has the robust adaptability of a lived-in warehouse, with solid wooden floors underfoot. The structure is a combination of reinforced concrete and steelwork. Steel trusses or ribbed concrete slabs span the big spaces. Circular steel columns prop office floors between the large span volumes and punctuate the open floor plan of the café. Concrete ceilings contribute thermal mass with acoustic clouds suspended to soften the sound.
There are no closed-in corridors. Every hallway has daylight and views in at least one direction. Every office workspace has views to the outside world. The basement venue is daylit from clerestory windows.
Inclusive Design
The building is designed with accessibility and inclusive design as key considerations. Approaches are step free. Floor plates are flat without steps. Circulation routes are open and legible with clearly identifiable way-finding. Services are located at consistent locations. The central wide stair was carefully designed to comply with standards and details agreed with the approved inspector.
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
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.
News: New York architect Daniel Libeskind has unveiled images of a timber-clad building to house physics researchers at Durham University in north-east England.
The £10 million Ogden Centre for Fundamental Physics will be located beside the university’s existing physics department on South Road and will accommodate two growing organisations – the Institute for Computational Cosmology and the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology.
Studio Daniel Libeskind won a competition to design the building back in July, but has only just revealed images following the news that over £5 million of charitable donations have been made towards the project.
“This new building will provide a tremendously stimulating environment and foster even closer synergies between the two Institutes’ research areas,” commented Martin Ward, head of Durham’s physics department.
Public consultation on the design will take place later this month, and the building is due to complete in 2015, subject to planning approval.
A series of steel-braced oak staircases and bridges connect the different levels of this extension to the Manchester School of Art by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (+ slideshow).
London architects Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios designed the extension to link the original nineteenth century art school building to a 1960s tower, which was also refurbished as part of the project.
A bank of lifts ascends from next to the entrance to every storey of the tower, with bridges and staircases helping to unite the old and new buildings.
The new building provides additional studio, workshop and exhibition spaces for the school’s 3500 students and features a seven-storey glazed facade, which creates an exhibition and events space that can be seen from the street outside.
Behind the gallery-like facade is a longer, lower building containing studios, workshops and teaching areas, which were designed in an open plan format to encourage interaction between students from the 30 disciplines that share the space.
“Private spaces no longer exist,” described John Brooks, vice chancellor at Manchester Metropolitan University, of which the art school is now a faculty. “What you’ll find are lots of spaces that are intersected by passageways, walkways, stairwells and glass partitions, so whatever you’re doing is almost like a performance.”
Referencing the aesthetic of traditional local warehouses, the architects applied industrial materials including concrete, steel and glass throughout the interior, while the open spaces and comprehensive use of glazing fill the building with natural light.
“This building is all about light,” said architect Keith Bradley. “The way that we’ve created a series of cascading floorplates, almost like a landscape of floors, allows light deep into the space so that we can still get the combination of people working together but also get good natural daylight.”
Concrete is treated with different surface finishes to demarcate the spaces; smooth in most areas, but with a rough texture created by casting it against chunky chipboard on the walls of the staircases.
Four of the double-height columns inside the studio and workshop building feature a decorative pattern that was produced during the concrete casting process. The pattern was designed in the early twentieth century by Lewis F. Day, a former tutor at the school.
Oak was used to line the staircases and linking corridors, and provide a warm and tactile contrast to the raw materials that dominate the interior.
Celebrating its 175th birthday in 2013, Manchester School of Art is one of the oldest institutions of its kind in the UK. The school was established in the 19th Century to help keep the region competitive in an international market and support regional industry in a wider marketplace.
Now a faculty of Manchester Metropolitan University this remains an important objective for the Art school and a key part of the brief was to help the school bridge the gap between education and professional life.
The new building celebrates the inter relation of the various art & design disciplines and encourages 21st century students to work alongside each other and enjoy the crossover rather than concentrating always on the differences. With a huge front window, it is also a building that is proud of its product and shows the work to everyone who passes by.
Now one of the leading Art & Design courses in the country, the School has around 3500 FTE students across its various disciplines. Housed within a range of late Victorian and post-war buildings, the School forms the southern edge of All Saints’ Park, a green square at the heart of the city centre campus. The Art School Extension consists of an 8600-metre-squared new building of studios, workshops and a gallery; and a 9000m2 refurbishment of a 1960s Arts tower and plinth.
Concept
FCB’s design of the Manchester School of Art has provided an engaging and lively environment in which to work and study and helped re-assert both the art school and the university’s profile on the national stage. The Dean of the School, Professor David Crow, describes the scheme as “a hugely exciting arena where anything is possible and everything is relevant.”
The working heart of the building comprises open studios, workshops and teaching spaces (known as the Design Shed.) A second element is a seven storey Vertical Gallery. This is the linking piece between the existing 1960s arts tower (known as the Chatham Building) and the new studio building. This vertical gallery provides a showcase space for the output of the School and acts as a shop window to the school itself.
Hybrid Studio Space
The open studio space places a great focus on collaborative working in an atmosphere that is inherently creative. Students and MSA staff from a broad spectrum of contemporary design disciplines can work on projects in close communal proximity. This proximity encourages the sharing of ideas, techniques and methodologies in a way that was previously impossible.
The Hybrid Studio is also an environment in which students can proudly display their work in a setting that is light and easy to explore.
Materials
As a building for designers, and a place for teaching and learning about Art & Design the clarity and articulation of materials was crucial, as was the tonal and textural quality of the interior. The interiors are a study in concrete, with three distinct grades creating different atmospheres. Rough is used in back stairwells giving a sense of rawness and a factory aesthetic; double height cast concrete columns articulate the central spaces of the design shed, punctuated by four very special decorative concrete columns which were developed from an early 20th century wallpaper design by Lewis F Day, an eminent designer of his period, contemporary of Walter Crane a tutor at Manchester School of Art.
A secondary but important material is the use of oak linings to the stairs and linking corridors which span the vertical gallery. These provide a warmth to soften the hard edges of steel and concrete which form the structure.
Collaboration
Working with clients who are artists and designers on a building for training artists & designers was a wonderfully rich experience for us. The level of collaboration was exceptionally high and we worked with the client by testing processes, recrafting ideas and always seeing the design as an iterative, creative process.
Client: Manchester Metropolitan University Construction value: £23 million Commissioned: June 2009 Construction Start Date: April 2011 Completion: April 2013 Project Gross Area: 17320sqm Cost Consultant: Turner and Townsend Contractor: Morgan Sindall Structural engineer: Arup
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