This project’s sliver of a site at Grade I-listed Clare College, Cambridge, was populated by boilers, catering stores, latrines and flues for most of the 20th century. Now, architecture studio Witherford Watson Mann (WWM) has transformed it into a café, a corridor and a fire escape that could win architectural prizes on their own merit.

A tour of River Wing at Clare College, Cambridge

Architect Stephen Witherford says the brief 'read like a collage of different departments’ practical problems… it wasn’t very aspirational’. With its growing student numbers, the college needed more ancillary spaces to serve the primary rooms: a lift, a dumb waiter, toilets, a pantry and an escape stair. 

One key element was to create a café that is non-hierarchical enough to suit staff, students and fellows. No mean feat at a college two years off its 700th anniversary. But on the day of Wallpaper’s lunchtime visit, students were sharing the space – complete with planted lightwells, a bay window, a terrace and a pergola – with a handful of construction workers.

WWM’s site was the building’s 17th-century north elevation, which was built in brick 'because this was a subservient aspect', says Witherford (rather than the classy pale yellow Ketton stone of the public-facing parts). The architects stripped out the 20th-century additions, giving them a 120m-long wedge, 8m wide at one end and just 1m wide at the other, dubbed the River Wing. 

Here, Witherford and his team put in a three-storey, self-supporting solid oak structure, to be 'subservient to the brick'. The lower part is infilled, mostly with bricks saved from the previous buildings, while the top part is glazed. 'The structure has become the architecture here,' he adds.

Behind the upper glazing is a gallery that runs alongside the fellows’ 1685 senior combination room. The view through the windows into this room is reminiscent of a Dickensian-style private members’ club – dark furniture, heavy tapestry curtains and decanters of port on a sideboard.

In the case of a fire, students occupying the bedrooms on the attic floor no longer have to climb out of a window and crawl along a gutter to an external staircase. WWM’s design is a sturdy but elegant spiral timber escape stair that seems far too stylish for back-of-house.

Witherford notes: 'It’s always a challenge to get dignified access [for all] to a listed building.' Now, at the touch of a button, some stone steps up to the main entrance retract, revealing a concealed integrated platform lift, which rises to the height of the threshold.

That refurbished entrance has flooring of grey Purbeck Grubstone and more oak. 'We’re not interested in that new-old crude clash, but in a continuous experience,' he says of these material choices. 

The River Wing is part of a £42m transformation of Clare College Old Court, which WWM led through planning and listed building consent with conservation architect Freeland Rees Roberts.

The first significant new construction at the college since the 1780s, the River Wing sits comfortably alongside its aged parent, and also, in spirit, alongside the architects’ 2013 Stirling Prize-winning Astley Castle in Warwickshire.

wwmarchitects.co.uk

Seeking to redefine what a university campus is, UCL East Marshgate is preparing to throw open its doors to its students later in September 2023. The new building, set in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and designed by Stanton Williams, was conceived with high ambition in mind; at the same time, it was born out of rigorous, methodical research and gentle collaboration between architects, academics, students and staff, trying to carve out the space needed for learning to flow and human knowledge to advance. 

'We wanted a campus that in a way redefined what a campus is, and how we train the future generation of students and innovators,' says Professor Paola Lettieri, pro-provost of UCL East. 

UCL East Marshgate: designing the university campus of the future

From the architects' perspective, designing UCL East was about 'breaking down siloes, collaboration and connecting disciplines. It was also about thinking about how those facilities might work in 20 years time, in the future,' says Gavin Henderson, principal director at Stanton Williams. The fields housed in side include the creative industries, engineering, robotics, green technologies and global health. 

The result is a building of considerable size, which was carefully articulated, a volume carved according the light, use and orientation, while following the outline offered by the area's masterplanners. A permeable atrium in the centre connects various uses and the indoors to the outdoors. 

This fluid public zone on the ground level spans the height of the building and has an 'almost urban quality' to it. Upstairs are the academic areas, organised in 'vertical neighbourhoods', that is clusters of two to three floors with a shared collaboration space each (Sheppard Robson was a joint interior architect for the scheme).

This distinction between public and more private spaces is subtly visible inside by a set of glass barriers that mean only staff, students and their guests can go beyond a certain point; but this can also be read through the building's materials. Rough textured precast concrete panels that nod to the gravel of the river on site dominate the exterior, but weathered steel highlights entrances and encases the areas that are accessible to all, creating a language that begins to map out what goes on inside. 

The client and architect team stress that the ground floor café and the atrium's open space are there to encourage the public to wander in, and stay for a bit. A rotating art display aims to bring a public art twist to this concept too.

The communal, flexible areas are naturally ventilated, as part of the design team's efforts to reduce the building's energy consumption – although the architects explain that heavy-use teaching areas had to be mechanically ventilated. Still, savings made up elsewhere meant that this building was rated BREEAM Excellent for its environmental qualities, aiming to reach 'net zero carbon by 2035 in keeping with the district’s wider sustainable energy strategy'.

'Drawing on the legacy of Lee Valley's industriousness and creativity, and the exceptional cultural and landscape setting of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Marshgate will be a place of curiosity, learning and collaboration. A place that engages with the surrounding city to create a new kind of university experience that balances a sense of permanence with a designed in flexibility that will both facilitate and embrace the rapidly evolving nature of academic practice,' Henderson says. 

stantonwilliams.com 

St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, has unveiled its major refresh by London-based studio Gort Scott. The project seeks to create a series of new, social spaces set to become the heart of the campus, weaving together existing areas and giving them a facelift, while ensuring the integrity of the historic fabric of the university's estate (originally founded in 1473) remains intact. 

St Catharine’s College, Cambridge by Gort Scott

The architectural reimagining of the communal areas at the college not only offer a fresh, crisp building envelope for the students and faculty; they also were crucial in improving accessibility and circulation across the whole complex. Various additions, extensions and repurposed parts over the years had left the campus with awkward spaces, in need of a strategic overhaul. 

Much of Gort Scott's surgical work on the building fabric involved 'harmonising and connecting'. The affected areas span facilities such as the hall, chapel, libraries, function rooms (including the senior common room), gym, music room, kitchens and busy service areas. 

Balancing layers of history and listed structures (including the Grade I-listed Main Court and the ancillary Chapel Court), the architects inserted new elements and interiors, creating a new hall with warm wood panelling and a sculptural feature chandelier, as well as a new gallery, and a rethought network of connecting spaces throughout. Gort Scott collaborated with heritage specialist Marcus Beale Architects on the period parts of the project. 

'We’re thrilled that St Catharine’s College is pleased with the way the reconfigured central spaces have enhanced the life of the College – with the reimagined hall as its centrepiece. It is great to walk around and see how the completed project has also been transformative for accessibility and inclusion. Old and new parts of the college are now connected as never before through careful placement of a lift and staircase in a new, light-filled atrium and garden room,' said Jay Gort, director at Gort Scott.

gortscott.com 

Bold shapes, colours and textures define the interior of Two Hands nursery, the newest interior by London architecture studio vPPR. Yet there's more than meets the eye in this pre-school piece of education architecture located in Shepherd’s Bush, as the project was conceived to combine great-looking design with sustainable architecture principles and a stimulating environment for the young minds of its users. 

Two Hands nursery by vPPR

The nursery's practice is inspired by the educational philosophies of Montessori, Froebel and Reggio Emilia, and the design has sought to support this approach. The bold primary shapes and colours in natural finishes reflect this, creating a mini cityscape inside the facility, which at the same time makes for clever storage and hidden elements that help create a streamlined and functional space. 

Meanwhile, an eco-friendly design ensures the built environment is the best on offer. 'It was incredibly important to us to support the health and wellbeing of the children and simultaneously meet the needs of Two Hands as a business. We wanted to use design to inspire, delight and solve running and maintenance issues. Even these smaller projects are a jigsaw puzzle of different needs and desires,' says vPPR director Tatiana von Preussen.  

Sustainable features include sensitive materials – such as low-carbon-impact Valchromat joinery, recycled cork flooring, and locally sourced and shredded tyres in the courtyards for playtime. There is also an air-source heat pump, natural ventilation and specially designed, energy-efficient lighting. 

Joanna Shall, director at Two Hands Preschool said: 'I’ve been delighted with vPPR’s work on our brand-new preschool, both in terms of the process and the outcome. The compliments are flying in from prospective parents and staff, but most importantly, we’ve already seen how well the space serves the children and meets their needs.'

vppr.co.uk 

When talking to the team behind the new Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, which opens for the academic year November 2022, the theme that keeps coming up is 'connection'. The project, created by Japanese architecture studio SANAA in collaboration with local studio HQ Architects, offers a new home for the school, moving it from its former location on the outskirts of the city, right to Jerusalem’s very heart. This, the institution’s president Adi Stern explains, is exactly what the school wanted for its new campus – and its future, in general. 

‘We dreamed of building an exceptional infrastructure for Bezalel, one that would propel it forward to the next chapter of its history. The new campus will enable us to continue to fulfil Bezalel’s vision of shaping the future of art, design, and architecture education and contribute significantly to the development of Jerusalem. Bezalel aspires to continue to train artists who strive for excellence, understand the environment in which they operate, and recognise their power and responsibility as critical and active citizens who impact culture, society, and the economy in Israel and the world. This extraordinary city campus in the heart of Jerusalem will be the perfect starting place for this educational journey,’ Stern says. 

Making SANAA’s Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design

SANAA, headed by Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, won the commission for this piece of education architecture through a competition in 2011. Yoshitaka Tanase, partner at the practice, describes what attracted the studio to the project: ‘We think the appeal of this project is that it is a very new form in this city, yet it has a sense of connection and unity with this city. We believe that this relationship will serve as a platform for the Bezalel Academy to nurture the diversity of the different departments and promote their interaction. The creativity and life of the students will spill over into the neighbourhood, energising it and, in turn, influencing the creativity of the students.'

The new building complex, named the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Campus, sits on a hill overlooking the Old City. It is also set among dense layers of Jerusalem's urban history, which the architecture team wanted to celebrate. The result was creating a building that looks a bit like a cascade of terraces, and feels open and transparent so that it can take in all the vistas and connect with the city on various levels. At the same time, this approach allows for its volume to be broken down to create a kind of a ‘village’, with friendly, smaller buildings, routes, plazas, and views carved out as a result, inside and out. 

‘The diversity within the Art Academy and its multidisciplinarity were inspirations for the design. Another major source of inspiration was the site, which slopes down to the Old City and is located in the centre of quite distinct surrounding buildings – the Museum of Underground Prisoners, a Russian church, Jerusalem City Hall. However, the size of this site was not large enough for the programme that was required. Another challenge was to fit this large programme into the site while ensuring the quality of the academic spaces, such as natural light and ventilation,' Tanase says. 

Materiality also played a key role in connecting the building to its context, as the team followed local planning regulations around material use, and created a concrete mix that uses local stone aggregates. ‘We did dozens of mock-ups in order to find the right mix and colour,’ HQ Architects’ founder, Jerusalem-born Erez Ella, recalls. ‘We also showed that this building is very Jerusalem in the way it’s built, it has little alleys, many different vistas. We wanted to show that we can make it feel of its place, without being too literal about it.'

Inside, the thread of connectivity continues, as Stern explains that establishing a building that allows interdisciplinary encounters and cross-pollination was crucial for the new home. 'Transparency was important from three different angles. It's about combining the indoors and outdoors in the way SANAA always does, so you’re inside and most of the time you feel like you’re outside; it's also about the community, and here the passersby can view through and see inside, walk around, see what an art school is like; and we also want to encourage our students to look out too, and remember where we are, and create things that have some connection to the Middle East, Israel, Jerusalem, ultimately, to create a sense of place.’

‘You can look through the building and out, as well as connect between the many departments,' says Ella, highlighting the rich mix of undergraduate and postgraduate courses to be housed in the new Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Campus. ‘So in a way, it’s a very modest building, blending with the environment, but it is also creating these unique conditions for education.'

sanaa.co.jp

hqa.co.il

bezalel.ac.il

In response to the revelation that students in rural Alabama towns weren’t getting the same academic opportunities as those coming from bigger cities, nonprofit Ed Farm and learning space design expert Kurani decided to act – and the idea for a facility that accommodates virtual teaching was born; welcome to the Connected Rural Classroom. 

The design studio's founder Danish Kurani played a key role in shaping this proposal, which is especially close to his heart: ‘I’m constantly asking, “What are people struggling with, and can I design something that will make it easier for them?" In America, if you grow up poor or in a small town, one of the things you struggle with is having the same opportunities as people who are born rich or in a big city. You just aren’t exposed to as many people or opportunities that can help you. Having grown up in a small town in the South, I know this firsthand.' 

In developing his proposal, Kurani dug deep and engaged in intense research, drawing on his own experiences – the aim was to achieve a design that goes beyond mere aesthetics and has functionality at its heart.

‘For people who use a space (and rely on it), there’s a big difference if your focus as the designer was on achieving a particular style versus if you focused on creating solutions to their problems,' he says. 

As a result, technology sits at the heart of the Connected Rural Classroom concept. ‘Technology in schools should help students – often it doesn't. When schools have slow computers and wifi, students waste their days waiting for devices to load a webpage or app they need. And because most schools don't have the latest hardware or software products, it's virtually impossible for students to progress far and become a master at anything,’ Kurani explains. 

‘It's partly a funding issue. [...] But poor tech in schools is also a design issue. The right set-up in school can boost kids. All of a sudden they have this incredible support that helps them get stuff done, incredible stuff. Not only is each of our Connected Rural Classrooms equipped to beam in top teachers who can mentor and guide the students, but students also get professional equipment for creative content creation: iPads, tripods, ring lights, soft boxes, microphones, photo and video editing software. It’s like a tech playground.'

The Connected Rural Classroom uses cleverly integrated technology to create a flexible environment that promotes learning. Instead of relying on in-person teaching, as the typical American classroom would, this concept moves away from the rows of desks facing a certain way, with little scope of adaptability. Here, the proposal is built around hybrid areas and hubs of tech-based teaching. 

Innovative materials and gadgets were important in composing the right atmosphere and offer opportunities for learning and wellness. The colour palette is chosen specifically to promote calm and creativity; the carpet and wallpaper use recycled materials, reducing carbon footprint; and divider panels are made from sustainable medium density fiberboard (MDF). Air purifying filters, and carefully designed natural and artificial lighting, and graphics, were specifically chosen to support productivity. 

The team is currently in the process of building these classrooms all across Alabama – but the aim is to bring Connected Rural Classroom far beyond the state borders. ‘Any school in America can have it,' says Kurani. ‘They just have to message me and I can bring it to them.'

kurani.us

The College of the Holy Cross has just opened a $110 million performing arts centre designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro expressing the school’s commitment to liberal arts as a core component of its curriculum. The team behind it highlight that it is designed to break down boundaries, celebrating inclusivity and creativity through putting public space for coming together and debate at its heart. 

‘There’s a spirit of cultural change that’s brought about by this space and by this building that I think is absolutely fundamental to who we are at Holy Cross,' says associate professor of music Daniel J DiCenso.

Prior Performing Arts Center is more than a house for the theatre and music departments. Not only is there a sound-engineered, 400-seat proscenium stage lined with makore wood tricked out with technology, along with a 200-seat black box theatre and an art gallery, the space aims to serve as a public commons where students from all degree programmes can gather, lounge, use specialised facilities, experience ad hoc events and orchestra performances, and hang out at its café. Sitting near the top of a hill above Worcester, the second biggest city in Massachusetts after Boston, the building is visible to the town and was designed to be open to all. 

On the outside, it looks like an elegant Frank Stella sculpture. Folds of formwork composed of reinforced glass concrete panels curve over sheer walls of rusted steel, accented at each corner with gardens planted by landscape architecture firm Olin Partnership. Curtain walls and clerestory windows bring daylight to the central gathering space, dubbed ‘the Beehive', opening up views of its production facilities, set shop, costume design studio, and sound and AR/VR labs. 

The interaction of concrete and steel, mirroring the brick and limestone of Holy Cross’ historic campus, plays with ideas of backstage and public presentation, merging expressiveness and function, one of the hallmarks of the Diller Scofidio + Renfro office. The designers analysed the college’s needs and the building’s anticipated uses and devised a site plan that inadvertently, they claim, happens to form a cross. ‘We love doing academic work,' says Charles Renfro, the lead principal designer. ‘We know that they want a pedagogical tool that also demonstrates the pedagogy.'

Last year, Vincent D Rougeau became the school's first non-ordained president. He says liberal arts education is a natural extension of the Jesuit order, which since its origins has been known for intellectual inquiry and embrace of the arts. ‘Since our earliest days, we’ve been focused on humanities, arts, and science, and we see all of those coming together as a path to wisdom,' he says. ‘This centre is going to help us elevate all of those pieces in a stunning new space and communicate to the world all of the aspects of what makes a liberal arts education great.' 

In a world where tensions can easily rise, especially when it comes to issues of diversity of thought and religion, it is down to the school's new public commons approach to lead the debate and demonstrate the success or failure of the building’s gesture of inclusivity.

INFORMATION

dsrny.com

Mexico City-based Ignacio Urquiza Arquitectos (IUA) reveals what is the second site for the same client in the city of Mérida, Yucatan. The project, the new home for the local School of Business and Banking (Escuela Bancaria y Comercial, EBC Campus Mérida), was a response to the educational institution’s need for more space, as the Mérida university grew its activities and needed to accommodate more students. The architects' solution was to craft a site-specific design that fulfils its brief, while taking into account the scheme's location and climate.

In composing its contextual approach, the studio paid close attention to the region's specific climatic conditions – high temperatures, intense humidity and regular northerly winds. The result was a complex that may appear ‘solid and weighty’, but remains permeable at places and creates a light interior, orientated towards the north to make the most of the cooling breezes. 

The exterior, appearing streamlined and uniform, uses chukum stucco, a traditional material that can be made locally and is defined by its durability and low maintenance – making it especially sustainable. Meanwhile, its earthy colour and texture mix well with the urban surroundings. The complex's programme, which expands across some 6,700 sq m of built surface, is elegantly broken down into six volumes, arranged around a courtyard, which is flanked by colonnades that act as open-air circulation routes, protecting users from the intense sun. 

The architects explain: ‘In the recent educational buildings we have designed, we have focused our attention not on the built space of the classrooms but on the voids and circulation routes, the spaces that connect the teaching rooms with the specific programmes. In this case, this passageway that takes new forms on its path through the campus generates a space of encounter outside of the classrooms.'

Inside, the project contains a variety of classrooms in different sizes, but also teaching rooms for online classes, a 40-seat auditorium, a multipurpose hall that can be configured as a 200-seat auditorium, a cafeteria, a learning centre with a library and study rooms, the courtyard that serves as a key gathering place for the community, a gym, an administrative area and service areas – all wrapped with IUA's pleasingly tactile shapes, their steady rhythm of vertical openings urging you to look up towards the blue Mexican skies. 

INFORMATION

ignaciourquiza.mx

Art, architecture and design students at Indiana University are now able to pursue their disciplines within the newly opened Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design, which owes its design to none other than modernist architecture maestro Mies van der Rohe. The building, which has been carefully adapted for contemporary use by Thomas Phifer and Partners, was designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1952 for the Bloomington campus, but never realised. It was originally commissioned for the university’s chapter of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity, but subsequently abandoned and then forgotten. The design only re-emerged in 2013 when Sidney Eskenazi, a former member of the chapter, revealed its existence to the university’s then-president and a trail of rediscovery began.

The road led Indiana University to uncover documentation of Mies van der Rohe’s design and the project, in the archives of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 2019, the university announced that it would finally turn the two-storey, 100,000 sq ft building into a reality, with a $20m donation from Sidney and Lois Eskenazi to cover part of the construction costs. 

Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design: a Miesian vision now realised

In its finished form, the new Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design elegantly places thin panels of white-painted steel with expansive glass panes, each 10ft square, next to grey limestone and epoxy terrazzo. Floor-to-ceiling windows encase the entire second storey of the 60ft-wide and 140ft-long building, giving it a feeling of transparency that’s further enhanced by its elevation above the ground plane, while the lower floor is mostly open air.

The building houses lecture, workshop, collaborative and office spaces, with a central, open-air atrium bringing an added lightness to its interior. With visible architectural connections made to Mies van der Rohe’s other contemporaneous creations, such as the Edith Farnsworth House and early concepts for the Illinois Institute of Technology, the Eskenazi School is a true treasure to behold.

‘We are thrilled to mark the opening of the Mies Building, which will enable faculty and students of all our school’s programmes to come together and collaborate,’ says Peg Faimon, the school’s dean. ‘Just as important, this magnificent building shows who we are, representing the excellence to which we are committed. There can be no greater inspiration for us than to learn and work in a masterpiece by this titan of 20th-century architecture. Let us hope that it will be a lasting monument to the power of collaborations and connections of all kinds – artistic, creative, intellectual and, above all, human.’

In celebration of its opening, the school will host a public open house on 8 April 2022. Thomas Phifer and Partners is also responsible for the university’s Ferguson International Center, which is currently under construction across the street from the Eskenazi School.

INFORMATION

thomasphifer.com

The University of Pennsylvania has opened the Meeting and Guest House in downtown Philadelphia. Adjacent to the President’s House and lively 38th Street, as well as key campus sites Perry World House and the Kelly Writers House, the brand new, Deborah Berke Partners-designed building is intended to support social life at the university and features a range of event and gathering spaces within a reimagined late Victorian townhouse.

Originally built in the late 19th century by W Frisbey Smith, who was then a young graduate of Penn’s architecture programme, the structure has been redesigned and added to by the New York architecture studio led by Deborah Berke. It ‘transforms the Victorian townhouse into a 21st-century destination’, and offers residential suites for honoured guests and visiting dignitaries.

Victorian townhouse turns Meeting and Guest House

Using a three-part logic that follows the massing of the original Victorian townhouse building, a new vertically grooved terracotta façade is inserted at the rear and east side, reinterpreting the brick of the original building. The eastern part of the building also includes a former parking space now designed as an event space.

In addition, techniques such as ‘transparent and veiled glazing’ are utilised to carefully call attention to daily transitions of light, allowing the building to ‘glow like a beacon’.

The lobby is supported by window walls that open out to the terrace, whilst the mezzanine unites the staircase and elevator with a conference room that leads to a meeting and event space. The second floor hosts offices, multipurpose meeting rooms and a board room, and the remaining two floors host four suites and offices, catering to university guests.

The Meeting and Guest House is preserved through repointed brickwork, the installation of a new roof and the reglazing of original windows, with the rest of the restoration process focusing on ornamentation.

The main entrance, newly repositioned to the south side of the building, is a ‘fully accessible addition off a shared motor court’ and is adjacent to Locust Walk, a busy pedestrian thoroughfare that is the ‘life and blood’ of the campus.

Employing clever, sustainable architecture, the Meeting and Guest House building has earned a gold certification from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design programme. This demonstrates and aligns with architects Deborah Berke Partners’ design ethos of honing ‘complex considerations – environmental, social, and aesthetic – into meaningful architecture’. 

The Meeting and Guest House building is now open to the public, from Monday to Friday.

INFORMATION
dberke.com

facilities.upenn.edu

The Green School in Bali is known for its finely tuned programme that follows children from early years through to secondary education, infused with a focus on creativity, the arts and ecological responsibility. Founded by John and Cynthia Hardy in 2006 and built around the principles of sustainable architecture, the school is a unique take on education; and now, it can also boast a brand new structure in its midst. The Arc, designed by local design and architecture studio Ibuku, headed by Elora Hardy, has recently been completed, offering a fresh visual shorthand for education architecture and the school's green identity through its pioneering, green bamboo roof. 

The project was designed to host a wellness space and gymnasium for the school campus. Whimsical but sturdy, beautifully undulating as well as light and dynamic – almost like the bamboo version of a boat's billowing sails in the wind – the roof is thin and balanced, and feels organic and close to nature. The trick was marrying traditional, age-old techniques for building with bamboo, and new technologies, Hardy, explains. 

Bamboo roof is both inspired and eco-friendly

The structure is a feat of engineering, taking bamboo architecture to a whole new level, including bespoke elements and intensely researched building methods. It is created ‘from a series of intersecting 14m-tall bamboo arches spanning 19m, interconnected by anticlastic gridshells that derive their strength from curving in two opposite directions,' the Ibuku team explain. The masterful designs were refined in collaboration with German carpentry specialist Jörg Stamm and structural engineers Atelier One.

‘The Arc operates like the ribs of a mammal's chest, stabilised by tensile membranes analogous to tendons and muscles between ribs. Biologically, these highly tensile microscopic tendons transfer forces from bone to bone. In The Arc, bamboo splits transfer forces from arch to arch,' says Stamm.

Drawing on the local architecture vernacular, as well as organic design, mixed with cutting-edge engineering, The Arc at Green School in Bali is an eco-friendly design, proudly showcasing the power and beauty of nature and geometry.

INFORMATION

ibuku.com

Monash University is located in the Melbourne suburb of Clayton. Founded in the late 1950s, the campus has a strong architectural presence, with structures such as John Wardle’s new Learning and Teaching Building, Lyons architects’ Green Chemical Futures building, and the Biomedical building by Denton Corker Marshall. The university’s School of Biological Sciences building dated back to the first tranche of modernist structures in Australian architecture put up in the 1960s. Kosloff Architecture presented a bold refurbishment plan, which was picked instead of outright replacement.

Re-use and reconfiguration are becoming an increasingly essential part of the architectural discourse. The 2021 Pritzker Prize winners, Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, made their name through creative re-use, and more and more architects are calling for building stock to be retained and retrofitted to cut down on the vast carbon costs of demolition and rebuilding.

Working alongside the artist Callum Morton, Monash Art Projects (MAP), Norman Disney & Young (NDY), Wood and Grieve Engineers, and Arup, the architects steered a project that blends an aesthetic overhaul with a complete upgrade for the building’s services and environmental performance. The new façade is composed of angular blocks, creating a dynamic form in the heart of the campus.

This façade was installed over the existing structure, which was then demolished from inside, an approach that saved time, money, and significant disruption. The new ‘curtain’ of faceted blocks hangs down to just above ground level, where it is ‘lifted’ to reveal a layer of custom glazed bricks, stepping up behind the bold trumpet-like entrance.

This striking orange portal was created in collaboration with Callum Morton, and leads to a new gallery of Monash University’s art collection, as well as providing student access to biology and psychology labs, classrooms, lecture halls, and offices. Inside, exposed concrete frames are paired with splashes of bold colour.

The new façade has significantly improved the building’s insulation and running costs. Julian Kosloff and his team believe this strategic approach to refurbishment is best suited for busy sites like universities, where ageing infrastructure, limited funds, and the need to avoid disruption make a solid case for this kind of energy-saving intervention.

INFORMATION

kosloffarchitecture.com

Set in the middle of the Thar Desert in rural India, this low, oval shaped building is a brand new sustainable school designed by New York architect Diana Kellogg. The Rajkumari Ratnavati Girl’s School draws on its context and the shape represents, Kellogg explains, ‘the power of femininity and infinity.' The school is soon going to be part of a bigger complex of sustainable architecture, the GYAAN Centre, that will also include a women’s cooperative and an exhibition space. 

The school is built using local, hand-carved sandstone in order to blend seamlessly with its arid landscape. Many of the families of the girls that will attend the school were involved in the construction, which used only local labour. Furniture was also made there out of rosewood with traditional Charpai woven seating. Drawing on Jallis, the screen walls traditionally used in the region for privacy, the school features permeable surfaces that allow the air to circulate while creating shade. Meanwhile, local ancient water harvesting techniques maximize the rainwater use and recycle gray water. 

‘Effective design is a process requiring deep understanding of the history of a place – its culture, its topography and its vernacular,' said architect and studio founder Diana Kellogg. ‘I wanted to create a building about light and community – a structure that resonates with the soul of its people and enforces the natural energies to nurture and heal the women and girls.'

The Medha – a performance and art exhibition space with a library and museum – and The Women’s Cooperative – a space where local artisans will teach women weaving and embroidery techniques from the region – will soon join the sustainable school. The aim is for the complex to improve the lives of the local community, in a region where female literacy barely touches 36 percent. 

The project was commissioned by CITTA, a non-profit organization that ‘supports development in some of the most economically challenged, geographically remote or marginalized communities in the world.' Complementing the brand new building, Indian fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee created the student uniforms. Set to open in July 2021, the school is going to cater to some 400 girls from nursery age up to year ten.

INFORMATION                                                                                                    

dkarchitects.com

Commissioned by the Isabel Aninat Echazarreta Foundation, a charity that supports vulnerable people, including children and young people with disabilities, this new school is designed by architect Sebastián Irarrázaval. Situated on the outskirts of Santiago in Chile, the impressive new piece of education architecture features its creator's signature approach of clean, geometric forms and knack for modern, minimalist spaces. 

A crisp, white, concrete composition of low and tall volumes, the Integral Stimulation Center unites a variety of spaces, including classrooms, laboratories, a gymnasium, a chapel and a heated pool. Functions are divided into clusters and designed to cater to specific student groups and special educational and mobility needs. 

Located in the neighbourhood of Talagante, the new school offers a protective environment for vulnerable people. It also provides a range of facilities designed to stimulate the cognition of its pupils, through formal and informal learning experiences. 

‘We proposed to accommodate these varied programmes in the manner of a walled citadel that would provide children with a protective environment, while allowing the coexistence of not only these diverse programmatic units, but also of different forms of movement through the interior: some more hierarchical and orderly, others more free and labyrinthine to encourage fortuitous encounters,’ says Irarrázaval.

The two taller buildings flag up the main entrance and the chapel, respectively, while operating as orientation points for the school’s users.

A version of this article was published in the April 2021 issue of Wallpaper* (264)

INFORMATION

sebastianirarrazaval.net

The Skinners’ School, Royal Tunbridge Wells, UK

Established in 1887, The Skinners’ School was founded by its namesake London livery company in response to local demand. Now, again responding to the changing demands of the area, Bell Phillips Architects has added a refined brick building that sits alongside the 19th-century schoolhouse. The expansive main stairway and the double-height library are lined with Red Grandis timber creating a warm and captivating learning environment.

bellphillips.com

Sharana Daycare Facility, Puducherry, India

Built to nurture social progress as well as promote education among disadvantaged groups in the city of Puducherry in southeast India, the Sharana Daycare Facility’s design is as holistically considered as its ethos. Designed by Anupama Kundoo Architects, it features porous terracotta screens that aid natural ventilation and filter in light. With lightweight partitions, the centre is highly adaptable and easy to maintain. 

anupamakundoo.com

School by a School, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands

Designed as a series of learning clusters, School by a School is a project in the northern Netherlands. Each classroom feels connected to its neighbours. At the heart of this education building is the brickwork façade of an original structure designed in the 1920s and a timber-lined atrium. Catering for a wide age-range, the design by De Zwarte Hond and Studio Nauta emphasises transparency, connection and collaboration.

dezwartehond.nl; studionauta.com

Erdu Primary School, Deqing, China

Spread across a vast campus of 8,864 sq m, the Erdu Primary School by architectural designers Qiu Jiayu and Paul Mok, is highly modular, with units formed of a teacher’s office and a conjoined classroom. The units are all linked by a sinuous, open circulation system. Located in Deqing, a rural town near Hangzhou, the school serves as a model for how affordable, but high-quality education spaces could be introduced to rural China to serve smaller communities.

paul-mok.com

Universidad Carolina, Saltillo, Mexico

Encircled by walnut trees and pines, Universidad Carolina emerges from a small wooded plot. The design by Taller Arquitectónico and Roma212 with Yolanda Ceballos includes an exposed concrete structure and infill panels in a deep russet-toned brick. Celebrating its lush surroundings in Saltillo, northern Mexico, the stepped mass was arranged according to the positions of trees on onsite. The play of light through the leaves adds to the sensory pleasure of walking through arcade, which threads across the main façade.

roma212.com; tallerarquitectonico.com; yolandaceballos.com

David Brownlow Theatre, Berkshire, UK

Commissioned to enhance the arts curriculum at the Horris Hill School in Newbury, Jonathan Tuckey’s David Brownlow Theatre is a play in three parts: refinement, utility and sustainability. The 160-seat auditorium is clad in earthy-red wood fibre panelling and its entrance is framed by a grand, double-storey timber portico. The stripped-back interior features exposed CLT framework interspersed with beech battens of varying depths. Every part of this passively ventilated education building was considered to reduce wastage, keeping in check the project’s overall carbon footprint. 

jonathantuckey.com

Childhood friends Chris Kennedy, an architect, and Tom Woods, a product designer, set up their joint practice in 2014 in Peckham, south London. Now, the young studio counts a team of 11 designers and architects. At the heart of their approach sits ‘user-focus, tenacity, and a problem-solving mindset’, they say; but their consideration for kindness, integrity and empathy is also something that distinctly comes through when you talk to the enthusiastic founders of Kennedy Woods Architecture. The studio is also the UK's first – and currently, only – B-corp certified UK architecture practice.

A B-Corporation accreditation is a ‘badge’, awarded to businesses that balance commercial success and purpose. ‘In simple terms, we are committing to balancing people, planet and profit,' explain the team. ‘In other words, thinking about all stakeholders, not just shareholders, that our business impacts during key decision-making. This includes employees, suppliers, society and the environment too. There’s a rigorous certification process you have to undergo, which measures your business’ entire social and environmental performance. This is regularly reassessed, and we aim to continually improve our impact for each assessment.’

What led them to get the certification? ‘We wanted to stand out among the noise,' they say. ‘As an objective, third-party guarantee of sustainable and ethical business practices, our B-corp status is a badge that helps us connect with like-minded clients interested in impact, as well as attracting purpose-driven talent.' While the accreditation remains a rarity among their peers, the pair feel there’s a sense of a growing movement around it. 

Led by this approach, the studio has been working on a wealth of commissions since its inception, a key one being becoming the design partner for a nursery start-up, N Family Club, that is looking to disrupt the education sector and create a network of Ofsted Outstanding schools. Developing, together with the business, the overall spatial identity for a series of nurseries all over London, Kennedy Woods has been working to translate educational philosophy and operational requirements into a set of design standards. 

‘By understanding in detail what works for children, parents and the operator, we’ve been able to convert a range of building types, including churches, community centres, care homes, and retail spaces, into nurseries. Each time playing to the character of the original buildings while maintaining a consistent brand experience,' the team say. 

Another important project for the firm was ‘Hearing Birdsong’, a healthcare innovation project they produced together with UCL and the Dyson School of Engineering to co-design and prototype a new type of hearing test. This might feel a long way from conventional architecture, but Woods’ product design background means he and Kennedy have worked on a lot of less ‘traditional projects, including modular and micro-architecture schemes’. While Kennedy and Woods don’t believe in an aesthetic house style, they are very particular about process: ‘We follow a “design thinking methodology” – an evidence-based, human-centred approach to innovation popularised in product and service design – that allows us to access a wide variety of project types.' This method involves a solution-based sequence that goes through five key steps: Empathise, Define (the problem), Ideate, Prototype, and Test. The team’s latest design is for a zero-carbon new-build school in a particularly constrained backland site in east London – they have just submitted their planning application and are eagerly awaiting results. Under the ‘less traditional’ projects banner, Kennedy and Woods are working on launching a user-centred architecture framework, built to help organisations innovate with the end-user in mind, to improve critical social infrastructure. Inspired by their experiences and faced with the industry's – and the world's – Covid-induced challenges, while armed with ambition and its defining, considerate approach, this young studio is already jumping into action.

Information

kennedywoods.co.uk

The Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Library in Washington DC is the only building of its typology designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; and one of the last by the modernist master, completed posthumously in 1972. Mecanoo, with local partner OTJ Architects, recently completed a modernisation of the US capital's landmark, and photographer Paul Clemence documented the refresh, offering a virtual tour of the reopened building.

Interventions included reworking the main entrance and circulation cores to increase transparency and capacity; designating the centrally placed Great Hall as a space for events to become the library's heart; and removing columns and partitions on upper floors to create the flowing and flexible Upper Great Halls. 

A new green rooftop terrace was added, as well as a ground level cafe. The reading rooms were refreshed and key areas for children and teens were expanded. As a result of the renovations, the Mies van der Rohe-designed library's public space increased by 60 percent. Now, the structure, which was declared a historic landmark in 2007, can be more open and cater to more visitors. 

Delft-based Mecanoo are experts in cultural institutions and libraries; they count the Library of Birmingham and the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts in Taiwan under the belt. Here, they emphasised openness, movement and communal areas, bringing the community to the heart of their design. 

‘The vision for the MLK Library revolves around respect for the original architecture while updating the building to a modern library that reflects a focus on people, celebrating the exchange of knowledge, ideas and culture,' say the architects.

INFORMATION

mecanoo.nl

WINNER

Temple of Steps, Andhra Pradesh, India

Pictured top, Mumbai-based architect Sameep Padora was commissioned to create this temple for the residents of a number of villages around Nandyal in India’s Andhra Pradesh. The architect’s aim was to try to connect ‘the socio-cultural expectations of a temple with the ecological framework and dynamics of and around the site’. A nearby canal, previously used to irrigate the surrounding cotton and chilli fields, was dried up, so the architect went to work bringing water back into the landscape, flowing from the ground through neighbouring limestone quarries to form a pond. The temple’s volumes were imagined as a traditional ghat; a flight of steps leading down to a waterbody. This is a nod to the country’s particular historical typology, found for example in the city of Benares. India’s rich cultural heritage was a key source of inspiration for Padora in more ways than one; he also drew on a Tirupati 10th-century temple to plan his design that combines water and manmade structures. The building is made using black limestone slabs, profiled to form the steps and the roof. The structure incorporates soil and planting to help with cooling, to negotiate the region’s intense heat.

sp-arc.net

KEY FEATURES: water, historical references, stone architecture, planted architecture 
ARCHITECT’S PREVIOUS WORK: school library, Kopargaon, India; Lattice House, Jammu, India; Shiv Temple, Wadeshwar, Maharashtra, India 

SHORTLIST

MEETT, Toulouse, France

OMA’s MEETT Exhibition and Convention Centre in Toulouse links the city and the countryside; an industrial part of town and the agricultural landscape to the north; and through its function as an expo site, Toulouse and the rest of the world. Located to the city’s north, in its new ‘innovation zone’, the complex is planned around three main volumes, created in parallel to each other: a row of modular exhibition halls; a convention centre and multifunction event hall; and a reception area, including a silo car park for some 3,000 cars. The last is placed at the centre of the composition, leading visitors to the volumes flanking it and their respective functions. Seen as an ‘extrovert’ structure by its creators – a team led by OMA partners Chris van Duijn, Ellen van Loon and Rem Koolhaas – MEETT is ‘not an architectural intervention, but an urban machine. Both monumental in its scale and subtle in its overall impact, it will be a new gateway to Toulouse.’ French practices PPA Architectures and Taillandier Architectes Associés were associated designers. The structure has a fairly limited colour and material palette, alluding to a functional, pared down approach that is simple – yet carefully thought out – and easy to navigate. A series of black boxes, white-coloured steel and a polycarbonate skin make up the exhibition halls. Inside, vast, flexible, impressive spaces with a utilitarian feel are filled with natural light.

oma.eu

KEY FEATURES: urban campus, functionality, pared down aesthetic, polycarbonate skin 
ARCHITECTS’ PREVIOUS WORK: Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy; Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia; CCTV Tower, Beijing, China

He Art Museum, Shunde, China

Southern China’s traditional distinctive round buildings reflect the ancient belief that the sky is round and divine, and the Earth is square. Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando has reinterpreted this vernacular and the region’s famed waterside architecture for the new contemporary He Art Museum (HEM) in Shunde. The founder, He Jianfeng, who owns industrial investment group Infore, one of the region’s most successful businesses, hopes the museum’s striking architecture, Western works of art, and focus on southern China’s Lingnan culture will spark serious interest in culture and the arts. The entrance to the 16,000 sq m spiral-shaped pavilion, situated adjacent to Infore’s headquarters and plaza in the central business district, is by a path that crosses the pond encircling the museum. Inside, a monumental central skywell and floor-to-ceiling windows with aluminium alloy louvres flood the interior with daylight. An imposing pair of double-helix staircases in Ando’s signature smooth silvery-grey concrete create a dramatic Guggenheim-esque feel emphasised by the slightly cantilevered ascending four-storeys. There is a square ground-floor gallery, bookstore and café, and circular exhibition spaces above.

tadao-ando.com

KEY FEATURES: circular shape, concrete architecture, traditional vernacular references
ARCHITECT’S PREVIOUS WORK: Punta della Dogana, Venice, Italy; Church of the Light, Osaka, Japan; Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum, Naoshima, Japan

Town House, Kingston, UK

Community was a key factor in the design decisions of RIBA Gold Medal-winning Grafton Architects, which won the commission to create Town House, a structure to combine a library and dance studios for Kingston University under a single roof. Stepping inside, the architects’ intention becomes instantly apparent through the sheer openness of the building – both physical and symbolic. There are no barriers towards the street, so anybody can walk in and stroll around the library or get a coffee at the canteen. The interior is composed of large, interconnected halls and double- and triple-height spaces, adding a sculptural touch. Nothing seems hidden away, although clever niches were created for privacy. The street-facing colonnade and a continuation of the floor material from the outside in are designed to encourage people to step inside. For a building that is primarily made out of concrete – constructed by the multi-award-winning contractor Willmott Dixon using prefabricated elements – the whole feels extraordinarily light. This sense is increased by large openings throughout and the elegant but hardwearing, everyday materials, such as wood, which help create a sophisticated but comfortable atmosphere, entirely fit for purpose. At the building’s heart sits an auditorium. Partitions can be drawn back to allow natural light to pour in, through the glass expanses of the façade. The building has achieved a BREEAM Excellent rating for sustainability. Roof gardens allow the use of brown roof technology to absorb water and to enhance biodiversity.

graftonarchitects.ie

KEY FEATURES: prefabricated concrete elements, sense of light and space, high sustainability rating, roof gardens 
ARCHITECTS’ PREVIOUS WORK: Universita Luigi Bocconi School of Economics; Milan, Italy; Venice Architecture Biennale 2018; Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología (UTEC), Lima, Peru

US Olympic & Paralympic Museum, Colorado, USA

Conceived to pay tribute to the Olympic and Paralympic movements in America, the latest Diller Scofidio + Renfro design opened in summer 2020 in Southwest Downtown, Colorado Springs. The US Olympic & Paralympic Museum is a striking piece of architecture defined by a soaring roof, clad in aluminium scales, that sweeps and folds impressively against its Rocky Mountains backdrop and glistens in the extraordinary local sunlight. Even with its commanding presence and picturesque setting, the architects say they have placed ‘Team USA athletes at the centre of the experience’. The building features 20,000 sq ft of galleries, a state-of-the-art theatre, event space and café, all celebrating the athletes’ ‘energy and grace’ and the much-loved international event’s values. The architect and client team also proudly state that this cultural offering is ‘amongst the most accessible museums in the world’, as DS+R paid special attention to this in the design, ensuring all areas and events are equally accessible to people of all abilities – and they all share a common path through the building. While the impressive façade consists of over 9,000 unique folded anodised diamond-shaped aluminium panels, inside, a crisp, white colour palette creates a fitting context for rotating shows and various displays. A terraced, covered plaza sits at the heart of the complex, leading to exhibition halls and café area.

dsrny.com 

KEY FEATURES: a roof clad with aluminium scales, accessibility, reflective volumes, irregular shapes 
ARCHITECTS’ PREVIOUS WORK: Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley, USA; The Broad, Los Angeles, USA; High Line, New York, USA

SEE MORE FROM WALLPAPER* DESIGN AWARDS 2021

‘The rigorous, decades-long rural-urban migration has led to significant reduction of students in rural China,' say designers Qiu Jiayu and Paul Mok. The two creatives – Hangzhou-based Jiayu and New York based Mok – who met as classmates at the University of Hong Kong, were called upon by the country's Education Bureau in 2015. The task was to work on a proposal for a new school model for Deqing, a town in the countryside outside the urban hub of Hangzhou. 

The pair developed a design for the sustainable architecture of Erdu Primary School around small-class-teaching, a flexible, alternative education model that responds specifically to the needs of lower population numbers in the region. This allows for smaller student ‘hubs' and fewer teachers overseeing them, offering at the same time more opportunity for group play, learning and exchange. Spatial planning followed accordingly.  

‘In this particular project, we mainly focused on designing a classroom-and-teacher-office module that would serve as a prototype for future school designs to implement small-class-teaching,' explains Mok. ‘Of course, in our minds, we were always picturing kids running happily around the campus, like what ourselves did as kids. I think that intent is registered in the multi-layered, continuous circulation system that we ended up with.'

Smaller class sizes meant smaller classrooms, providing indeed further space for outdoors areas and communal activities. External circulation and seating were also promoted. The designers formulated terraces, bridges, wide staircases and balconies throughout to ensure students have plenty of space to use for formal and informal activities. These connect with the indoors circulation axis of the main building creating a ‘continuous circulation system', explain the two creators.    

‘The functions of indoor spaces (classrooms, gym, offices, etc.) are very specific,' continues Mok. ‘The functions of outdoor spaces, on the other hand, are a lot more flexible, and therefore have a lot more potential for spontaneous interactions among students and teachers: for games during breaks, small group activities, inter-class events, etc.. It also gives the students enough space to exercise during rainy days. A typical school corridor is already a very active space. We further activated it by distributing these outdoor ‘pocket spaces' along the continuous circulation system that is composed of corridors, bridges, terraces, etc.'

The duo worked closely with a local design institute – Zhejiang University of Technology Engineering Design Group Co. Ltd – who took care of engineering, landscape design, construction design and construction administration. Spanning 8864 sq m, Erdu Primary opened for the new academic year this autumn.

INTRODUCTION

paul-mok.com

‘We believe in architecture even more now!’ implore Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, the two co-founders of Irish studio, Grafton, while reflecting on where their practice was when Wallpaper* last profiled them in 2000. Back then, Grafton was 22 years old and still only beginning to populate Dublin with small, carefully crafted architectural moments.

‘[We wanted] to set up a structure in which as good a work as possible could be done,' the pair says, outlining what they initially wanted to achieve when they founded Grafton. ‘Changes do happen over time… the building industry changes, the craft of building comes under pressure, the form of contracts gets more complex, etc. etc., but in the end what architects gift to the world is spatial invention, a new reality, to hold complexity, capture light, hold sound, hold life, make life pleasant, form a new community, make an elegant window, make legible connections. It’s an amazing profession: it has a huge responsibility, a huge capacity; it’s a form of magic!'

Today, Grafton is a practice whose magic has spread to South America and across Europe. But while its recognition and influence has grown, the firm only employs 36 from its office in Dublin — an indication of Farrell and McNamara’s desires to stay grounded. The firm has also made a name for itself in the education sector: initially with the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at Trinity College Dublin and later with landmark projects such as the School of Economics at the Universita Luigi Bocconi, Milan and the UTEC university campus in Lima.

‘We have always loved being involved in making educational buildings – primary schools, secondary schools as well as universities. What is important about universities is that they are places which liberate the mind. They add to culture, both at an individual and at a collective scale.'

The latest in this line of buildings is another school of economics, this time in France at the Université Toulouse 1 Capitole. Echoing Lima and Milan, Grafton has employed weighty, solid forms to produce a building rising seven storeys high and abounding in spatial drama — concrete and brick being the primary materials that create corridors in the sky overlooking the Canal de Garonne and thick, ‘deep walls’ that facilitate natural ventilation without the need for fenestration.

‘Our main ambition was to make a contemporary building which evolved out of the sensual beauty of that brick city,’ said Farrell and McNamara. ‘What we hoped to achieve was that the building would enclose the community of scholars, encouraging overlap within its spaces, framing connections back out to the city, making each scholar more aware of the elements of the city of Toulouse […] the buttresses, the walls, the ramps, the cool mysterious interiors, the cloisters and the courtyards.’

This year, Grafton was awarded the Royal Institute of Architects’ Royal Gold Medal — the institution's highest accolade. The practice shows no signs of slowing down either. Projects in London (one, another university building for the London School of Economics), Dublin, Cork and Arkansas are all in the making — all set to be sprinkled with that Grafton magic.

MORE FROM WALLPAPER* ARCHITECTS DIRECTORY 2020

INFORMATION

graftonarchitects.ie

Architecture is a field where change can be slow. It usually takes a couple of years minimum for new (permanent) buildings to rise and even smaller or temporary projects can be a matter of months, so an ‘immediate response' to anything can take a while to take off. As soon as Covid-19 hit the globe though, architects knew that change was afoot. Now, six months on, while physical space might only just be starting to register transformation, the discussion in the community has been gathering pace, with designers and architects sharing ideas, initiatives and design proposals that would help us navigate spatially this strange ‘new normal' for months now.

The debate has been wide, touching upon all building typologies and different stages of the architecture profession and its related fields – from education (what does the pandemic or post-pandemic school look like? and how can the academic world contribute to finding solutions?), to workspace (what might a ‘safe' office look like right now? and is there even need for one?), and even construction. As Modernism was at least partially shaped by the aim to create a healthy building environment during the first half of the 20th century, it is entirely possible that our current challenges will birth new inventions, philosophies and practical solutions for everyday life now too. And if they do, what form will this new architecture take? 

These new narratives have evolved fast and discussion platforms emerged quickly within the global architecture community, in the form of webinars, zoom discussions or digital festivals (hello, LFA Digital 2020), offering plenty of food for thought and opportunity to scrutinise and elaborate on positions and approaches. Some projects have even started taking shape, offering us a glimpse of how a post-pandemic architecture world might look like, and how the different facets of architecture can make our lives better in these challenging circumstances.

Education

With a large number of schools across the world currently still shut and the need to find a safe way to educate the new generations growing in urgency, discussion has been raging as to what education buildings can look like in this new context. Inspired by outdoor learning at schools in Denmark, London-based studio Curl la Tourelle Head Architecture proposed socially distanced tents, a design which they started implementing, as their first pop-up school proposal is currently being trialled at Manorfield Primary School in Tower Hamlets; and a second, at Fortismere School in Haringey, is already in the works.

In a different part of the world, Dubai-based architect Pallavi Dean of studio Roar looks at the crisis as an opportunity to rethink our education spaces altogether, putting together a white paper on the long term solutions we can apply (a suggestion pictured above). ‘Home learning has really made us think about the physical spaces in a school where the magic happens, both in terms of educational attainment and personal enrichment. We need to create more of these spaces – and not waste precious real estate on spaces for humdrum tasks,' says Dean. Clever, efficient and flexible design is a must in this context. 

Meanwhile at the Moscow Architecture School MARCH, a newly launched online discussion series ‘Architectural (De) Schooling in the Age of Quarantine' is bringing the discussion to higher education. Do we need architecture schools? Do we need them to change? It's questions like these that guests, including Tom Emerson, Sam Jacob and Salomon Frausto, are called upon to tackle, as the series unfolds through June and July. 

On the West Coast of America, the California College of the Arts Design Futures Lab is holding a series of virtual discussions as part of San Francisco Design Week, including a recent one on what matters now in architecture and design education, with speakers including Joseph Grima and Lesley Lokko. Tune in this week. 

Community and events

In the architecture community and beyond, digital events such as the ongoing London Festival of Architecture and Design Variations Virtual are looking at different aspects of design in the state of crisis and invite the public to take part. The Yeh Ideology 14th Annual Design Summit 2020 is going live on 25 June themed around ‘Design for Disruption', reflecting on the ways the built environment can be affected by the pandemic.

Similar issues are also touched upon in a new bi-monthly webcast – Design Disruptions – launched this month by New York based journalist, curator and regular Wallpaper* contributor Sam Lubell, exploring the substantial shifts in design resulting from issues like Covid-19, systemic inequality, climate change, the digital revolution, and the housing crisis. Guests include Moshe Safdie and Ma Yansong. 

In London, the crisis acts as a catalyst for discussions here too, on a series of wide ranging topics. A recent webinar (now available to view online) including architect Alex Lifschutz and lighting designer Mark Major looked at lighting, and the experience of London and its iconic architecture and public space at night, pre- and post-lockdown. (Pictured, above, a proposal by lighting specialists Speirs + Major for reducing illumination of interiors in order to improve the public realm and the area's night time experience). 

Construction

International architecture studio Hassell has been highlighting a different aspect of the architecture process; whether the pandemic might play a role in expediting concepts of automation within the construction industry. The idea is not new. Machines like drones, Spot® robot dogs by Boston Dynamics and smart, remote control technology are already is use in this setting, so could the need for social distancing make the use of robotics in construction more widespread and desirable, wonders Xavier De Kestelier, head of Hassell’s global design technology and innovation team.

Future proofing construction against similar pandemics might be a key concern in the field as building sites across the globe resume operations. And what does this mean for the industry's human resources? The firm recently explored creating a specially designed, fully viable Mars habitat, constructed by autonomous robots as part of the Design Museum's Moving to Mars exhibition (pictured above).

Workspace

With a large part of the global population working from home for the past few months, discussions about returning to an office environment, what it means and what changes are needed in order to create an appropriate workspace, are heated. London based office interior specialist Linda Morey-Burrows of MoreySmith feels that several areas within office design are bound to change (see sketch pictured above), from the overall density to the materials used, to ensure surfaces prevent virus transmission (natural materials, such as wood, seem to work much better on that front). ‘There'll be a reduction in density by about 50 per cent. Developers are asking me if they need more office space,' she says, although admits that while workspace is changing and companies will need to work harder to make offices attractive, the need for a more formal workspace will remain – just transform. ‘People are desperate to come back together for some social interaction. Wellbeing is going to be even bigger than ever before.' 

This is an area workplace design experts ThirdWay are addressing too. The firm has recently launched Hybrid Working, a new programme to help businesses navigate their return to the workplace (pictured above). The emphasis is on balancing an office and a remote setting, merging approaches to increase safety and life satisfaction. Spanning three stages – initial assessment, a six-month of smaller but permanent adjustments, and finally a 1-3 year long rebuilding and cost evaluation phase – the proposal is aimed at recalibrating workspace for the companies that need it. 

Returning to a pre-Covid set up seems unthinkable by many, but radical change is tricky too. Canadians ACDF Architecture feel the reality will be somewhere in the middle. ‘In speaking with many of our clients, it’s apparent that many of them are confident that they will return to the vibrancy of their pre-COVID day-to-day operations,' says practice partner Joan Renaud. ‘That being said, our clients are also very aware of the current environment. So, whether it be in response to this current pandemic, or preparing for the next pandemic, this new reality must form part of the conversation about every new layout that we approach. [...] It takes time to change our habits, but I think that there are ways to incorporate flexibility into office design without making Covid-19 the focus of a project.'

New York-based architecture studio FXCollaborative is already implementing changes in its workspace as the crisis caught them at a very interesting point in time; the firm was building 1 Willoughby Square, which will include its new office building in Downtown Brooklyn, when the lockdown hit. The architects moved fast and made a series of changes to the project's interiors, which are still in construction, so that their future home reflects current needs for a contactless environment and social distancing. Automatic doors, touch-free faucets, plenty of outdoors space, extra bicycle provisions and state-of-the-art ventilation systems were a must. ‘The biggest challenge for FXC in moving to a building we have designed is going to be proving our design principles hold water by swimming in them ourselves as the inaugural tenant,' says design director Angie Lee. ‘The most important thing we are trying to change is our addiction to business "as usual". I personally am looking forward to a different kind of pressure: the pressure to loosen our grip on old habits and model new behaviors to be more mobile, tech-savvy, remotely capable, and healthy.'

Housing

Housing is another area where architects expect developments – yet social distancing and stay-at-home quarantine guidelines have made this process even slower. One could argue though that the need for workspace at home and extra privacy are two key trends that are starting to emerge, pushing the once-coveted open-plan living space to the side. An environmental approach is also key within the new normal, weaving into housing concepts of nature and wellbeing – for both people and planet.

London-based architect Tara Gbolade, who heads an exciting emerging studio in the capital (her design for an energy efficient house in Kent, pictured above), works in both the residential and the sustainability realm and knows this pandemic will change the way we think on both fronts. ‘The quality of housing must adapt, as we continue to spend more time in our homes. This argues for far more energy efficient homes – and responding to both embodied and operational energy (therefore advocating for higher standards such as passivhaus as we strive to meet net zero carbon standards). And critically, ensuring the need for pre-occupation performance assessments and certification – to ensure that the performance gap we are used to glossing-over in the construction industry can be addressed,' says Gbolade. ‘Our post-pandemic housing and communities will also need to accommodate more diverse uses including locally available co-working spaces as more people work from home but may need respite from the four walls of their house or flat.'

Senior living, a sub-category to the genre that feels especially relevant in the context of the current pandemic, will no doubt be affected too. This is a typology that London based Morris + Company has been involved in and looking back at its experience, the studio points out open air spaces, generous apartment sizes and circulation space, and internal adaptability (all featured in the firm's most recent such project in Belsize Park, Belle Vue, pictured above) as two important elements to look out for. ‘I hope, however, that from these practical requirements to minimise risk in the future, the design quality for existing and future retirement communities will increase,' says director Miranda MacLaren. ‘Shared living is an opportunity to tackle isolationism in society and provide healthy communities that can support each other. There is an opportunity within this crisis to set higher standards for the future for retirement developments and offer a dignified and supportive environment for residents who are an integral part of our local community.' There's also no reason why such principles shouldn't apply to residential projects for the wider population too. 

Meanwhile, new concepts for adapting our homes to the new realities have already started to emerge, with this week's announcement of the winner of the Covid-19 Design Innovation Grant by the International Design Awards (IDA). Designer Sarah Goldblatt has created a concept for an in-home isolation pod, the low cost, easily assembled Safe Shed, where residents can self-isolated safely from others in a single household upon the appearance of symptoms. No doubt more inventive designs will continue to appear, showcasing the diversity and richness architecture has to offer in problem-solving. 

INFORMATION

clth.co.uk

designbyroar.com

u.university

sfdesignweek.org

yehideology.com

Design Disruption

Saving The Night

hassellstudio.com

moreysmith.com

thirdwayinteriors.com

acdf.ca

fxcollaborative.com

gboladedesignstudio.com

morrisand.company

idesignawards.com

The new National Automotive Innovation Centre (NAIC) opened in February on the University of Warwick’s Midlands campus. The brief for the building was simple: devise a shared environment for research that could halve the time from original idea to final production, with both industry and academia under one roof.

The NAIC's ultimate goal is to develop future transport solutions that create zero accidents, emissions and congestion. The £150m centre is the result of a partnership between local businesses Jaguar Land Rover and Tata Motors plus the University of Warwick, with £15m of funding from the UK Government’s Research Partnership Investment Fund via Research England. Designed by Cullinan Studio, the centre sits on a 17,800 sq m site at the entrance to the University of Warwick’s main campus, offering good access to students and researchers alike.

Given the confidential nature of the work undertaken within the four-storey, 33,000 sq m gross internal space, at its heart there are secure technical laboratories and engineering and design halls. But surrounding these rooms are many open terraces and spaces, individual booths plus an exhibition area, cafe and entrance hall to encourage cross-fertilisation and inter-disciplinary meetings, where applicable. All working spaces are designed with flexibility in mind, including reconfigurable internal walls and projection-friendly surfaces.   

Architecturally, the building’s most impressive feature is its massive diamond-lattice, cross-laminated timber roof designed by Arup. This spans the whole structure, including the high outside entrance canopy propped up by two huge intersecting metal supports. The major glazing that makes up much of the centre’s walls is tempered by undulating exterior aluminium mesh cladding to help limit the sun’s heat and light from entering inwards while the surrounding landscaping – designed by Grant Associates – includes beds of native wild plants and a water course, to better integrate the building within its environment. Further ecological considerations of the design include a photovoltaic array on the roof and regenerative electrical heating connected to the University’s combined heat and power plant, all of which helped towards the building’s EPC ‘A’ rating and ‘Excellent’ BREEAM certification.

Inside the NAIC building, Cullinan Studio has created internal terraces surrounding the main working spaces on every floor to help users stay in touch with the natural world outside. As well as the physical benefits of exposure to natural light and air, rather than being tucked away in dark and sterile rooms, there are hopefully metaphorical benefits. Nature’s gentle encroach should be a subtle reminder that the products being developed need to tread more lightly within the environment they will ultimately operate. As Cullinan Studio’s design director Roddy Langmuir concludes: ‘We have tried to bring in natural light everywhere, marking the changing of the sun’s position across the day. Even deep inside the building, people have a connection with the day’s natural rhythms and changing seasons.’

INFORMATION

tmetc.com

Nestled in one of Paris’ oldest military sites, Lourcine barracks have been ambitiously transformed into a new site for Paris I Law University, complete with a library, lecture theatre, classrooms and offices. With the oldest parts dating back to 1875, the architects in charge of the project, the Paris-based Chartier-Dalix agency, have preserved the historic features of the site, while carefully adding in new elements with a strong contemporary feel.

Inside, natural light makes a wide corridor an ideal meeting space, where students and lecturers can gather around before heading to the other floors – all connected by a monumental, newly added, spiral staircase. The library’s reading rooms have been organised accordingly so that natural light can flood in through large original windows, creating a soothing atmosphere to those working on their academic studies.

Beyond a few modern and environmental upgrades, Chartier-Dalix has chiefly worked on clearing the heritage site, thus allowing its nineteenth century features and original splendour back into plain sight. Oak, glass and steel, added technical installations and industrial style made to measure pieces of furniture, bring the necessary contemporary touch to this renovation work, where old and new smoothly complement each other.

Outside, the grounds keep their original function as a central forecourt connecting a wooded garden and three buildings. Weathered steel panels pave the ground up to a gallery located at the lowest point of the site. Here what used to be an old car park has now been turned into a plush and stylish lecture theatre which can host up to 500 students.

Innovatively opening up to the surrounding existing buildings, the new Paris I Law University premises are an inspiring work of renovation, which brings a fresh architectural approach to this ever-changing south-eastern corner of the French capital city.

INFORMATION

chartier-dalix.com

In the grounds of Walmer Castle on the UK's Kent coastline, Adam Richards Architects has designed a new learning centre and café that echoes the brooding qualities of the 16th century castle with its sculptural handmade brick walls. Commissioned by English Heritage, which owns the historic site and gardens, it is the first new substantial building built on the site for 145 years.

Walmer Castle was originally built as an artillery fort in 1539-40 during the reign of Henry VIII, and from the 18th century, the Tudor-fortress turned into a stately home for historical figures such as Duke of Wellington, Sir Winston Churchill, and HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. The popular destination welcomes 3,000 education visitors annually, and needed a dedicated space to host these visiting groups and school pupils where events such as cross-curricular learning days and nature therapy sessions could play out rain or shine.

Architect Adam Richards, who scooped a Wallpaper* Design Award this year for his Nithurst Farm house in the South Downs National Park, responded to the brief with a single storey brick building. Inside, a single main room dedicated to group education features a five-pointed Tudor arc-shaped window that frames a cloud-shaped double row of hedges bordering the kitchen garden. Comfortable in its garden setting, the exterior is discreet and contemporary. Grey brick walls are framed by a shallow pitched zinc roof and a rough concrete plinth, sandblasted to expose the aggregate.

Sensitive to its site and existing architectural additions from the 18th century, the café makes the most of an original timber-framed glasshouse and opens up onto a Yorkstone terrace for coffees and lunches in good weather. Support spaces are housed in a black zinc building with cantilevered roof canopies.

Adam Richards, director, Adam Richards Architects, said: ‘This new learning space "bookends" the estate buildings at the castle, entering into a dialogue with the castle across space and across time. The garden is now re-presented to users of the new building through its vitrine window: visitors see it through this vast display case, framed by a new five-pointed brick arched opening.’ 

Connecting the garden even further to the site, a new outside staircase of galvanised steel clad in air-dried oak leads visitors into a lost quarry garden, the Glen, newly accessible to the public for the first time in 100 years. Here, head gardener Mark Brent has planted species that with thrive in the calcareous soil of the former chalk quarry, and craftsman William Hardie has designed a new children’s play trail.

INFORMATION

adamrichards.co.uk

english-heritage.org.uk

ADDRESS

Walmer Castle and Gardens
Kingsdown road
Walmer
Deal
CT14 7LJ
UK

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In the hilly landscape of Brighton, set back from the main circulation axis and sat among rows of historical terrace houses, the new OMA-designed School for Science and Sports at Brighton College stands out, its volumes unmistakably modern, their sharp, orthogonal outlines painted black.

Yet within the college’s grounds (which include a quadrangle composed of Grade II listed buildings designed by Sir Gilbert Scott and Sir Thomas Jackson no less, in the 19th century) this is not the only contemporary building. Eric Parry and Hopkins Architects for example have created work for the private, co-ed boarding and day school, which has been hailed as one of England’s finest independents.

Sport is a valued part of the curriculum here and a new sports building was required in order to continue this tradition. The Science department also needed a new home, and OMA, who won a competition for the project in 2013, thought ‘why isolate the department of Science from the department of Sports?’ Now, they continue, ‘the two are merged into one linear volume, situated at the edge of the playing field.’ And indeed it is, nestled on the hill at the northern edge of the campus and standing on columns, the admittedly large volume slowly reveals itself as you walk up through the site’s main entrance.

The architects took special care to make sure the outline is stepped to follow the terrain’s natural slope and match surrounding volumes. And by blending the two departments in a single structure, OMA ensure, they say, that this will be a vibrant building, where pupils interact with each other, without the ‘imposed silence’ often associated with conventional education buildings.

The generous breakout areas and circulation space underline their approach. ‘Buildings can reinforce or break that silo mentality [often found in education],’ says Brighton College headmaster Richard Cairns, who seems pleased with the new addition. ‘Here it works beautifully.’

The sports areas are placed closer to the ground, creating a relationship between them and the playing field outside. The grand sports hall, in fact, opens directly onto it. The plan may appear simple, but make no mistake; these are highly specialised facilities with state-of-the-art equipment and an impressive amount of built-in flexibility (the sports hall for example is designed to accommodate a variety of sports, such as cricket and basketball). Further down the corridor are a running track, a dance and weight studio, and, a flight of stairs down, the school swimming pool (which Cairns calls ‘Lido’).

Views through and mirrored surfaces are created at strategic places. ‘This way you can see a reflection of terraced houses and historic Brighton everywhere,’ says OMA partner Ellen van Loon, who led this project; this is her first school and OMA’s first sports building altogether. ‘It’s always nice for an architect to do the first of anything,’ she adds.

The science areas are located above, within bright classrooms with bespoke workbenches, placed next to staff rooms and all organized around a central circulation corridor that turns into a staircase as you move up. Further facilities include laboratories, a greenhouse and a screening room (or ‘Kino’, as the school calls it), with old Italian cinema style chairs, the same ones OMA used at the Prada Foundation in Milan.

Natural ventilation is achieved through hidden windows and a high level of transparency is present throughout – a key requirement from the client and one that OMA responded to with flair. ‘Glass was probably the most expensive thing, but transparency was very important for us,’ says van Loon. It is true, views across levels and open plan spaces that flow into each other make for an interior that feels ample and organic.

At the very top, an accessible roof offers sweeping views of the North Sea, and is one of van Loon’s favourite spots in the project. There are green areas, seating, a kitchen for events and even a track, for al fresco training. ‘Here, you feel like you are in the roofscape of the campus, and then you see the sea,’ muses van Loon smiling. And even on a grey and overcast day, it is clear that the building’s overall sense of openness and generosity of space finds its ultimate expression up here.

INFORMATION

oma.eu

Italian architect Renzo Piano has designed his first school: a 57,000 sq m campus on reclaimed land in Shenzhen’s Qianhai district, the first of 36 interconnected Whittle School & Studios campuses planned to open in 15 countries over the next decade. The eight-storey campus for 2,000 students is based on an architectural concept that can be adapted to other sites, conditions and building codes.

The Pritzker-prize-winning architect’s inspiration came from traditional Italian urban planning. However instead of the customary piazza where people meet, the ground floor is open-plan with a café for parents, and a large staircase and skylight at the centre of the building around which classrooms, a state-of-the-art gymnasium, theatre and spaces for specialized learning such as music and coding rooms are arranged. There is an early learning centre with its own entrance and professional canteen facilities.

A cable-supported glass façade means there are fewer internal structural columns and infuses the interiors with natural daylight. Piano believes this transparency and activity encourages a vital sense of connection within the local community. ‘A school is not separated from life,' he explains.

The design reveals the school’s innovative focus on creativity and emotional capacity as well as learning with a 4,650 sq m workshop space for interdisciplinary project-based work and flexible classrooms that can be made larger and smaller depending on needs. Tables can be placed in a circle and walls are designed as pin-up areas - like Piano’s signature architectural studio displays in Genoa, Paris and New York. There are also plenty of communal spaces for students and smaller, more intimate breakaway areas. Walls are simple concrete and bright orange furniture provides a pop of colour.

The whole campus demonstrates Piano’s trademark focus on creating buildings that are simple and intuitive to navigate with seamless connections to outdoor gardens and play areas, colour coded areas and bright graphics. The perennial problem of school traffic is elegantly resolved by a dedicated basement drop off and collection zone. Vehicles need bar codes to make pick-ups safer and easier.

The new campus is part of an impressive master plan for the whole district, which will include luxury high-rise apartments, retail, cultural and sports facilities and a new train line.

INFORMATION

rpbw.com

On an industrial back street in the construction heavy Hayden Tract area in Culver City, California, behind the PLATFORM lifestyle shops and next door to Jordan Kahn’s Destroyer Café, UCLA is making life better for its art students. The recently completed UCLA Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios is a massive concrete and wooden warehouse campus that enhaces the progressive artistic renaissance of the area.

Led by partners Sharon Johnston, FAIA, and Mark Lee, of Johnston Marklee, the building can be entered through a communal courtyard area with several Acacia trees. Immediately, the principal design concept of the project becomes apparent. The acclaimed firm won the project in 2011, and the scheme, including restoring an existing warehouse with new programs and labs, was originally funded by Eli Broad as a feasibility study. Then, in 2015, UCLA alumni and lead donor, Margo Leavin, came forward to help them see the project to fruition.

Designed for LEED Gold certification, the project was created following sustainable strategies, including the specialist renovation of the existing cast-in-place concrete walls and soaring open wood bowstring truss roof structure, along with a new horizontal steel truss system required for seismic retrofit and new PVC roofing membrane.

‘I think the big idea was that the warehouse became a neighbourhood of studios, so all of the artist studios are in that space,' said Johnston. ‘They range from 40 to 42 students every year and the word “neighbourhood” is important and you’ll get a sense of how we plan things so it doesn’t have an institutional endless hallway feeling.'

Counter to a typical campus, the building flows through a public gallery space, to a shootroom, an open-air sculpture yard, and a woodshop and ceramics yard, all surrounding the individual studios and artwork. ‘It feels a little like a labyrinth at times, which is what the old building was,' says project manager Lindsay Erickson, ‘and I think its kind of nice because you’re always entering between the old building, the new building, indoors, and outdoors. There are a lot of these moments that overlap in your passage.' 

Upstairs is the Artist-in-Residence studio apartment, the most sequestered part of the space, which proved to be a challenge because of its residential element. According to Johnston Marklee managing director Nicholas Hofstede, ‘it’s a 24-hour building, the students almost live here during the semester and then having someone who is also living with them in terms of a student-teacher relationship, there were big discussions about how to do that.'

As well as having a semi-open area, where potential collectors could have their eyes on the graduates, it was important to protect the student’s privacy. ‘It was an important driver,' says Hofstede. ‘Even having the public gallery – we debated because the intention wasn’t to make it one step into the commercial gallery world, it was more like helping students learn how to hang their shows and think about curatorial practice. I think with the faculty and students we try to think of the whole ark of the time that they’re here learning and they wanted a lot of freedom, but not to be over-exposed so that was the balance and that’s how the planning took shape.'

After a few workshops with the students to gain feedback, Johnston and the team were ready to execute, and while there were different genres in place from painting to sculpture, the architects didn’t want them to be segregated. The users should be able to freely move between different mediums; and their design allowed it. ‘I was just talking to that student and he said, yeah, it’s a really great feeling, on the one hand free, but also really connected to each other,’ recalls Johnston. ‘And I think that’s the legacy of the program: that it’s like a community.' 

INFORMATION

johnstonmarklee.com

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has revealed the grand jury for the 2020 RIBA International Prize. Led by Odile Decq, the selection includes Es Devlin as lay juror, Jeanne Gang, Rossana Hu and Gustavo Utrabo.

This year the jurors show a great breadth of skills within the architecture profession and a diverse spread of international experience. French architect and urban planner, Decq, is currently working on a residential project in Barcelona. Practicing in the US is Gang, founding partner of Studio Gang, headquartered in Chicago. From Shanghai, is Rossana Hu, founding partner of Shanghai based Neri&Hu. While London based Es Devlin OBE, artist and stage designer, will bring her international, creative lens to the selection process.

Representing the previous edition of the RIBA International Prize is architect Gustavo Utrabo, principal at Estúdio Gustavo Utrabo. Utrabo was the winner of the 2018 RIBA International Prize and Emerging Architect Prize for Children Village by Aleph Zero. Wallpaper* interviewed Aleph Zero’s Utrabo and Petro Duschene in 2018 after the prize was awarded. What made their project special was its strong social purpose and the collaborative nature of the design process.

‘The RIBA International Prize is a beautiful initiative that aims to recognise great architecture on a global scale by way of an insightful process. I’m looking forward to being part of it and discovering meaningful approaches to space, society and the environment that contribute to our collective future,’ says Utrabo.

As well as celebrating architecture that shows design innovation, sustainable technologies and meaningful social impact, the biennial RIBA International Awards also takes the opportunity to celebrate future talent with the RIBA International Emerging Architect Prize, that recognizes individuals practicing for up to 10 years. Then there’s also the RIBA International Awards for Excellence that awards 20 outstanding, boundary-stretching buildings.

In next year, the jury will visit the four shortlisted projects (as yet to be announced) in person to experience the construction, atmosphere and impact of the buildings: ‘The RIBA International Prize has an incredibly important focus – to discover the best architecture for a better life – and I look forward to travelling the world to find a worthy winner,’ says Decq.

This prize is a chance for RIBA to look beyond the UK. It’s open to any qualified architect for buildings, of any size and budget, anywhere in the world (apart from the UK). Entries to the prize close 31 October 2019, and the winner will be announced November 2020.

INFORMATION

architecture.com

A 17th century secret passage at an Oxford University college has been transformed into a library by Wright & Wright Architects. The new pale stone building links two existing ancient libraries at St John’s College via the passage, which now houses an artwork along one wall by Kirsty Brooks.

St John’s 600 students needed renovated library and study space, with more seating, desks and shelving. And according to the college’s president, Professor Maggie Snowling, they also wanted more loos, 24-hour access and somewhere to make coffee. ‘They had voted with their feet and were working in a nearby café,' she says.

W&W’s 1940 sq m building gives them a mix of working areas including 120 new desk spaces with Edward Barber & Jay Osgerby’s 2014 Bodleian Libraries chairs, sofas from Cassina and even W&W-designed daybeds. These soft, built-in mattress-like zones are tucked away on one side of the upper floor’s reading room. ‘They’re intended as relaxation areas, so we will see how they use them,' says architect Clare Wright, ‘they have evoked different reactions.'

The architects have designed the furniture and fixtures to be warm and long-lasting. Oak, brass and steel are complemented by desktop surfaces and carpets of rusty red. On the top floor is a seminar room with floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, which slide open to views onto the canopies of the nearby trees.

The new study centre and library runs along one wall of the baroque Canterbury Quad and overlooks the president’s garden. To give the president some privacy, no windows look directly on to the garden, but instead artist Susanna Heron has created a cut-stone bas-relief across the west façade. Beneath this is a shallow pool, and ‘sunlight reflects off the water and animates Heron’s abstract wall,' says Wright. She and her partner Sandy Wright visited the Spanish town of Granada, with the Alhambra’s palatial water gardens, to study reflected light.

This, W&W’s third Oxford building, will be followed by a library for Pembroke College.

INFORMATION

wrightandwright.co.uk

The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) has cut the ribbon on a new building on the campus – the biggest and tallest yet. Designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP), the Central building has a shifting façade that responds to its urban context and environmental conditions.

The School launched a campus master plan in 2011 that overhauled the whole Holborn site. Involving demolition, redesign and rebuilding, the plan saw the impressive Saw Swee Hock Centre designed by O'Donnell + Tuomey Architects open in 2014. Grafton Architects’ Marshall Building is currently on site, and completing in 2021.

While the reconfiguration has been unfolding, in the meantime students have forming their own paths through the site – always finding the most direct, yet complicated routes from A to B – around a lift core and out of a fire escape, relying on LSE’s trademark red cube as a guide. ‘Business as usual’ was the biggest challenge of the whole project for Terry Spraggett, managing director of public sector construction at Mace.

After hurdling complicated planning applications and negotiating a land swap with Westminster, RSHP’s building is the latest piece to be slotted into the puzzle – and it solves a significant part of the campus puzzle. With it, it brings a new square, a stepped timber seating and planting area, much more space than its predecessor. Including seminar rooms, conference-sized auditorium, study spaces, a ground floor public café, faculty offices, and a new alumni centre, it’s a proud new landmark for LSE.

Creating a focal point for the campus was an important part of the brief for Tracy Meller, partner at RSHP, who headed up the project. RSHP certainly know how to make an impact, yet there was also the (closely) surrounding architecture to consider. To the square, the building is a colourful LSE block expressing modernism, with its yellow louvres and a glazed façade that reveals red ceilings and open stairways inside the building. Yet overlooking Houghton street, a small road linking it and the campus to the Strand, it quietens down, adjusting its colours and levels to the historic façade opposite.

As well as aesthetically impressive, the façade design enables the building’s BREEAM outstanding rating. Increasing in depth as they rise, the louvres shade the building and provide a framework for windows that can be opened to naturally ventilate 70 per cent of the building.

The design evolved a fair bit from the competition stage. Brexit happened just before tender and the cladding went up in price by half a million pounds overnight. Plans had to change, but the Central building maintained its presence, functionality, and uniqueness.

There’s an auditorium for 200 people beneath the open-air square, reached by a staircase designed for socialising and informal meetings. There’s also the ‘Academic stair’ that unfolds in double height spaces through the faculty levels from level three to 12. It encourages a midday meander down to another department, instead of rolling into the lift on default.

The student levels feature open plan spaces for informal study and plenty of soft work booths in orange and grey that complementing the colour palette of the interiors – exposed concrete sofits, pigeon grey-painted steel, red acoustic baffles and blue staircases.

The building sees the trial launch of the ‘LSE-style lecture theatre’ to rival the classic Harvard-style theatre – ‘not that we are competitive or anything’ says Julian Robinson, director of estates at LSE. This one-of-a-kind theatre design features two sets of tiered desks facing each other, so students can easily switch from individual to group working by swivelling their chairs around. ‘Like the Houses of Parliament, it is set up for debating – semi-confrontational with chaos in the middle.’

Once you’ve wound your way up various stairs, your reward will be access to three outdoor terraces. From the 13th floor, you can step outside to see London from any angle – the spire of the neighbouring Central London County Court looms particularly close. If you look down onto the LSE campus, you’ll spot several pockets of planted spaces populated with seating, it's a campus of rooftop terraces. So while building works continue at ground level, students can search out some space above the city.

INFORMATION

rsh-p.com

lse.ac.uk

ADDRESS

London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street
London
WC2A 2AE
UK

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You know you've done something right, when a project that was meant to be temporary is loved so much by the users and client that it is given an extended lease of life. Such is the case of MOS Studio's School No. 3 (a.k.a. Petite École), a light outdoors structure that was built in Versailles, France on the occasion of the Inaugural Architecture and Landscape Biennial – Île-de-France this summer; yet it's increasing popularity meant that the client soon decided to keep it in place for a lot longer than originally thought, possibly over a year. 

The project was originally commissioned as part of the 2019 Biennial of Versailles, and built in the courtyard of the Versailles ENSAV school of architecture. Conceived as a workshop, studio, lab, classroom, atelier and multi-functional space for education, Petite École was created quickly and efficiently, employing ingenious fabrication and construction methods.

The open-air structure was built using 825 aluminium pieces, which had been modelled, flattened, cut, folded, prefabricated, shipped, and then assembled on-site by just a few people in a few days. Modelled as if it was made by paper, light and easy, the clever design means that Petite École can be disassembled and reassembled anywhere, at any point.  ‘The Petite École is a one-room, open-air design school for young children', explain MOS Studio directors, Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith. ‘It is a place for looking and making, and for making and looking'. ‘It looks familiar', continues the team. ‘It looks abstract. It is made of building elements: a long, low roof with columns and stacked beams holding it up. It is made of folded aluminium. It has a sign made of folded aluminium. It has furniture made of folded aluminium. It is meant to be looked at. It is meant to be inhabited'.

INFORMATION

mos.nyc

On the occasion of the Bauhaus centenary, architect and historian Prof. Dr. Zvi Efrat was commissioned to create a short documentary by Germany’s ‘Bauhaus Imaginista' travelling exhibition programme, with the aim of uncovering a lesser known Bauhaus building that would demonstrate how Bauhaus ideas had spread across the world. Efrat picked the Obafemi Awolowo University located in Osun state, Nigeria. Originally known as the University of Ife, the campus was designed by Bauhaus graduate Arieh Sharon together with a team of Nigerian architects including Lagos-based architect A.A. Egbor between the 1960s and 1980s.

Efrat’s film takes a social journey through the university site – into covered outdoor spaces where students gather informally, past concrete buildings connected by pathways, up stairs and through courtyards where air circulates, light penetrates and shade cools. With his lens, Efrat wanted to capture how Bauhaus design and theory was combined with climactic and cultural specificity – most importantly with continuing success today.

The layers of the university’s history, and its meaning today, are as complex as its layered levels of architecture. The building represents an important moment in time for Nigeria as a symbol of its 1960 independence from Britain, while also at play is the national relationship between Europe, Israel and Nigeria as well as Arieh Sharon’s Bauhaus education. Even the act of Efrat’s own documentary-making is critical to the neccesary post-colonial conversation. As an architect, academic and author, Efrat was well positioned to approach all of these angles through his documentary.

The commission for the university project arose within a decade when political relations between Nigeria and Israel were aligned. ‘The year of 1960 was the moment of independence for Nigeria, when it was decolonized from the British. The country wanted to build a university that would represent Nigeria’s own ideas of democracy. They didn’t want to use British architects, nor architects of European powers, but Israel was also considered as a country that also had been decolonized a decade before by the British. Later however, 10 to 15 years on, Africa would reject Israel politically, and in the 1970s it would be not welcome,’ says Efrat.

Political events such as the rise of Hitler in Germany and the Independence of Israel from British mandate in 1948, lead to architect Sharon designing the University of Ife building. Sharon was studying architecture at the Bauhaus in Dessau under Hannes Meyer where he lived with his wife and daughter in one of the Master’s Houses, when in 1931 he was forced to leave to Palestine. There he became the lead architect of the Labour Unions under British mandate, designing communal workers houses in the Bauhaus style.

After the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, Sharon became the state architect in charge of master planning: ‘In 1950 Israel published a master plan, I call it the mould of Israel, which determined the shape of the state that we have today. Sharon is a very important figure in Israel, where he designed a lot of new towns and hospitals,’ says Efrat.

‘In the 1950s, the focus for Israel was looking inwards, but after that, in the 60s, they were looking for new frontiers and part of this was establishing new relationships with developing countries. Israel was going through a period of diplomacy, sending agricultural and military aid, but also sending skills such as engineering and architecture, specially in Africa.’

For Sharon, who passed away in 1984, the university was the largest project of his later years. He took it very seriously, explains Efrat, and travelled as far as Mexico City to search for a model for the building: ‘Alongside the local team of architects and the local academic leaders, Sharon was really working on a campus that would fit the Nigerian climate and culture. Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew set up the “Tropical architecture” department at the AA, but it mainly dealt with the skin and envelope of the building – perforating the outer walls or creating screens – but it was just the same boxy architecture, but with better shading devices and ventilation.

‘Sharon [and other architects on the project] didn’t use their [Fry and Drew’s] approach, but invested in a new tropical system. They inverted a pyramid, using the upper floors to shade the lower floors, freeing up the ground floor to open corridors, columns and patios. The landscape beneath the building is continuous and a very smart positioning of the buildings allows for the free circulation of air through the buildings, an architecture without doors. Yet it also protects people from heavy rain, through balconies and canopies, and protects from the harsh sun, as well as constantly being ventilated. Today, it’s what we call passive architecture.’

Instead of a Bauhaus aesthetic, as seen in education buildings such as the Bauhaus School in Dessau or the ADGB Trade Union School in Bernau, the Ife University Campus strikes a conversation up between modernism and brutalism. ‘It’s not a thin building with glass walls, but a lot of the ideas of Bauhaus are very much there,’ says Efrat.

‘First of all, it’s an architecture that is a tool to create a better human habitat and bring about social change. Also more specifically, Hannes Meyer, second director of Bauhaus, and Sharon’s mentor, really emphasized the more scientific approach to architecture, where architecture is not just an aesthetic whim, but based on a rational study of climate and physical conditions. Sharon followed this, and based his design on several ecological studies. Modernism wanted to be international, but in this campus, we see the influence of local culture – we see decoration on the walls and shapes that correspond to Yoruba culture.’

There was, however, much that could not be understood about the building from its history or its design, which Efrat discovered when he arrived to start work on the documentary. ‘I thought I had a certain narrative in mind, but I realised I had all sorts of Western colonial, post-colonial and smart academic preconceptions,’ says Efrat.

Yet from working with a local team of photographers living in Lagos, and through his interviews with professors and students, his ideas evolved much further: ‘The film became about the perspective, capturing the everyday life of the campus, the spontaneity it creates through its form and a description of the place by the people who use it. People were the main subject matter of the film.'

He continues: ‘The first time we came to film, suddenly we heard drums and music, and a political campaign for a governors’ election came out of the blue through the campus, it was a huge party to welcome the candidate. The second time, we heard a more melancholic brass music, and a procession of drummers and dancers, it was a funeral processing through the open ground floor of the university. Down the covered passages, everything is visible, the campus is a stage for daily performances, musical events and academic activity, and that’s just normal, its a very lively situation.’

You’ll see from the stills, or if you get a chance to see the documentary, how the building is designed like an eco-system, making space for every type of activity – quiet moments for reading, long corridors for a walk, courtyards for communal gathering, cover for rainy days and open air for mild ones. The auditorium, for example, seats 3000 people, yet it is left open and small classes of students bring in boards and books to study in small groups or sit informally together.

The University of Ife was born of a moment in history where colonial powers, nationalities, skills, climates, people and movements passed like ships and collided. Yet, today, as the Obafemi Awolowo University, the building has its own identity, carved through daily function and use by the people who populate it. The latter is the portrait that Scenes from the most beautiful campus in Africa – A film about the Ife Campus catches in motion.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Bauhaus Imaginsta website

The picturesque landscape of the Faroe Islands has just received a new architectural addition in the shape of the Glasir Tórshavn College by Copenhagen based international architecture firm BIG. The building is designed to combine context and strong, sculptural, modern design.

The new structure is essentially a complex of different functions, comprising within a single, coherent design the Faroe Islands Gymnasium, Tórshavn Technical College and the Business College of Faroe Islands – effectively becoming home for a over 1,750 students, teachers and staff. Sitting on the edges of the island's capital of Tórshavn, the Glasir (as it's more informally, locally known) balances an urban scale with a certain lightness of touch, and views of the sea and greenery beyond the city, which connect it to its context. 

Since the scheme mixes many different uses, functionality and a clever internal arrangement were key to the design. BIG opted for a structure that is ‘organised like a vortex', explain the architects, with five levels planned around a central courtyard. There's ‘one [level] for each of the three institutions, one for food and faculty, and one for physical exercise and gatherings', the team adds. The circular void at the heart of the building is a stepped, architectural landscape that mirrors the natural one outside, and allows space for meeting, relaxing and socialising for students and staff.

Connections to the outdoors were equally important for the team, so the external materials chosen – glass and aluminium – were picked for their lightness and transparency, allowing for the views and setting to take centre stage. All areas of the building open up to the surroundings, with the top levels, in particular, cantilevering out towards the mountainous scenery. Adding to this balance is the complex's rooftop, which is planted with grass that will grow to eventually ‘allow the education center to disappear into the Faroese landscape'. 

‘Inspired by the dramatic Faroese topography, Glasir is designed like a landscape for learning: the central space of the school is conceived as a topographical interpretation of the natural landscape — a continuous terraced terrain with steps and staircases that connect across several levels and merge the multistory building into a single entity', says BIG founder and creative director Bjarke Ingels.

INFORMATION

For more information visit the BIG website

A cascading array of copper pillars is the first thing students will see when they visit the new Business Innovation Hub at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) with architect of record Goody Clancy, the new 6,500 sq m facility is an extension to the Isenberg School of Management, which offers space for 5,000 students and 150 staff.

Falling like dominoes, the pillars undulate around the building, looping round to join the existing (1964) Isenberg School of Management building behind, framing an internal courtyard in the process. Much like the Statue of the Liberty, the copper-clad pillars will gradually oxidise over time after being exposed, changing colour to form a patina.

According to BIG founder and creative director, Bjarke Ingels, the pillars are a ‘generous invitation' from the adjacent Haigis Mall to an area inside the new building known as the Learning Commons. Beyond the triangular glass entrance, light pours into a triple-height atrium, with shadows from the pillars being cast across the foyer. Students will first encounter the aforementioned 450 sq m Learning Commons area — a social hub which will host guest speakers, ceremonies, banquets and career fairs.

The remaining first and second floors link directly with the adjacent building and here, innovation labs, advising spaces and faculty offices, which will be used by both staff and students, can be found. Furthermore, the Chase Career Centre (incorporated into the new building) offers 15 new interview rooms, along with new conference rooms and breakout areas, which are dispersed throughout.

Spaces inside have been designed to facilitate student interactivity, fostering teamwork and chance encounters by employing soft chairs in corridors, benches on the building’s main stairway and moveable classroom chairs, which can be used for lectures or group work.

This collaborative ethos continues outside to a circular courtyard with a garden and stone benches. ‘The mall and the courtyard – inside and outside form a forum for the students, the faculty and the profession to meet, mingle and mix society and academia,' says Ingels. Pathways leading off that connect back to the main Isenberg School of Management campus, travelling under two new, copper-clad bridges, which connect the new and old buildings above.

INFORMATION

For more information visit the BIG website

Peeking gracefully above a lush canopy of foliage near the southern coastline of Singapore, the new NUS School of Design & Environment 4 is at one with its landscape in more ways than one. Not only does its porous concrete structure appear lightweight, but so too is its environmental impact. Designed by London-based Serie Architects and Multiply with Surbana Jurong, the 8,500 sq m, six-storey building is the first NET Zero Energy building of its kind in Singapore, meaning that it generates as much, if not more energy that it consumes within its building footprint. 

At their best, faculty buildings that house schools of architecture and design – apart from serving the functional needs of their occupants – strive to demonstrate and represent the pedagogical ambitions of the school itself, states Christopher Lee, principal of Serie Architects. ‘From the outset, it was clear that SDE intended to use the design and the completed building as a pedagogical tool for tackling the challenges of climate change in the tropics'.

When designing the forward-thinking building, Lee reveals that his studio was in fact looking back – in particular to the construction of traditional Malay houses. To allow for cross ventilation in a humid climate, these houses were built on stilts with large over-sailing roofs that sheltered a loose accumulation of rooms below. ‘Our design is a revalidation of the grammar of vernacular tropical architecture in Southeast Asia,' explains Lee. 

Opportunities for environmental education are numerous here. The undulating perforated aluminium panels that moderate the harsh western and eastern sun on the school’s facade are designed to be demountable, allowing students and researchers to test various façade systems on the building itself. Elsewhere, the school's south gardens are designed as a natural purification system, where the landscape improves water quality, and nearly 50 per cent of the plants selected are native species with most hailing from the southern tropics.

Thanks to the numerous terraces, landscaped balconies and informal spaces that punctuate the building’s architecture, more than 50 per cent of its total area is naturally ventilated. However, when additional cooling is needed, the client worked with Transsolar, who installed a hybrid system that uses a combination of tempered air which is less energy intensive than conventional AC cooling – with ceiling fans. ‘The resulting architecture is transparent, open, and comfortable, while at the same time requiring very little energy,' says Lee.

The school’s open design not only facilitates natural ventilation and provides students with access to nature, but also helps to foster a collaborative learning environment – there are no boundaries between places to study, work and socialise. An open social plaza placed at the heart of the building promotes interaction and visual connectivity, while chance encounters are facilitated by a circulation system that cuts across the different studios and classrooms.

‘SDE4 represents a scaffold for learning, teaching, and research designed for the 21st-century university,' comments Erik L’Heureux, the school's vice dean. ‘Not only does it envision how we teach today but also paves the way we might teach in the future.'

INFORMATION

For more information visit the website of Serie Architects

Nestled in a bowl at the end of a narrow river valley in the remote northern Armenian province of Lori, the village of Debet is far off the beaten track. So when the low, white outlines of the Children of Armenia Fund’s (COAF) sensuously curved Smart Center come into view, you are momentarily astonished. Rather than having risen from the ground, the light, pavilion-like structure, by Lebanese-Armenian architect Paul Kaloustian, appears to have descended from the skies.

‘I think the locals thought it was a space centre, with secret technology and hackers,’ says Shahane Halajyane, initiative director for the fund’s Smart programme. ‘COAF has been working here for years, but the villagers didn’t relate this building to them. They were sure it was some place for rich people.’ She should know. Although Halajyane now lives in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, she grew up 15 minutes from here. ‘We decided to bring in groups of children and parents during construction,’ she continues. ‘The idea was to give local inhabitants a sense of ownership.’

COAF, a socio-educational NGO, was founded by American entrepreneur Garo Armen, and has been operating in Armenia since 2003. Now, with the launch of its Smart Center initiative – Debet’s is the first of 20, subject to funding – it is seeking to bring the 21st century to rural areas, through after-school programmes in coding, robotics, engineering, visual arts, music and dance, all offered free of charge.

Kaloustian signed up to the project after Tony Shafrazi, the New York-based Iranian-Armenian gallerist and former art advisor to the Shah, sent him a message on Instagram. ‘It was surreal,’ Kaloustian says. ‘This was someone I respected, whose career I followed. He invited me to New York to meet in person; he’d lost his studio and had a project to replace it. Then one night, we ended up at a party, and we met Garo. The whole thing was very organic.’ A couple of weeks later, Kaloustian found himself flying into Yerevan.

‘The diaspora has this romanticised vision of Armenia,’ he says. ‘It’s an ideal. So when we go and see that it’s a real country, it leads to mixed feelings.’ For Kaloustian, though, Lori was love at first sight: ‘Excavation had already started for a three-storey structure, but I immediately wanted a single-storey building that related to the sheer size of the plot and the empty space around it. I wanted to design something big that would reach out and embrace the land, a landform, more than a piece of architecture.’

Kaloustian designed an irregularly shaped, winged building that pushes into the landscape via a long, as yet unfinished, curving promenade that will combine rooms, walls and open, ‘wild’ green spaces. ‘I’ve always been interested in exercises in ambiguity, the way you can do something that feels like an exterior, but is delimited,’ he says. ‘Like at the Alhambra. Spaces that are fluid and ambiguous, so the visitor feels something is different but doesn’t necessarily know what it is.’

For Kaloustian, the three-year project was a journey, both as an architect, and as a person of Armenian origin. Determined to be as bold as possible, he credits COAF for its willingness to travel along. The contractor, however, was another matter. ‘It was a shock of two mentalities,’ says Kaloustian. ‘There are traces of our clashes all over the building.’

This may be why, if you want, you can find fault. Minimalism is an unforgiving mistress and, in places, the building’s finish is imperfect. But these flaws do not detract from the overall impression that this dynamic beauty stands out even as it hunkers down, a glazed lantern adrift in a sea of green. There is nothing similar for hundreds of kilometres. Here in Lori, this building is alien and yet it is clear from the easy behaviour of its users that it is also their alien.

‘Unconsciously, that is what I wanted to achieve,’ Kaloustian says of a project he has loved, loathed and finally come to terms with. ‘The villagers are super proud of it. They’ve appropriated the building and understood it, and this is rewarding for an architect. §

As originally featured in the October 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*235)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit Paul Kaloustian’s website and the Children of Armenia Fund’s website

Young Brazilian practice Aleph Zero has been awarded the 2018 RIBA International Prize for its school project, Children Village, in Northern Brazil.

The gong, which is awarded to the best building every two years, had a strong list of contenders, including a university building in Budapest by O'Donnell + Tuomey, a Tokyo music school by Nikken Sekkei, and the Vertical Forest tower in Milan by Boeri Studio. Yet the Brazilian school, designed by Aleph Zero in collaboration with Rosenbaum for the Bradesco Foundation, won the jury over for its thoughtful design that will improve the lives and wellbeing of its students.

We met with Aleph Zero's Gustavo Utrabo and Petro Duschene to discuss their winning project Children Village. 

W*: Congratulations. When you heard you won, what was your first reaction? 
AZ: We were amazed. As a fairly young practice, we thought that the RIBA International Prize was out of our reach and assumed that it was only given to world-renowned architects. We deeply wanted to win, but when it happened we couldn’t quite believe it – it will take a while to process.

W*: Tell us a little about what winning this award means to you? 
AZ: It’s the ultimate recognition of our dedication to architecture, which would not have been possible without the many professors and colleagues that have helped and collaborated with us, to whom we are immensely grateful. It appears that the issues that interest us, while deeply linked to local problems, reverberate beyond national boundaries. Winning this prestigious prize brings great responsibility and we are committed to continuing our work in a responsible and energetic way.

W*: Could you give us some context for this project? How did it come about? 
AZ: It came to us through an invitation from the designer Rosenbaum, who had the first contact with the client. We spent ten days together at the school and the surrounding areas, gaining a better understanding of the local context and, more importantly, establishing a bond between the students and the new building. In doing so, we hoped to increase the students’ sense of belonging in the future dormitory.

W*: What makes this project different? 
AZ: Undoubtedly its strong social purpose. The Bradesco Foundation has a longstanding commitment to promoting quality education in Brazil, which transcends educational parameters and uses architecture as a means for transformation. This is very rare in Brazil. Secondly, this was a very collaborative project involving an outstanding team of architects, designers, engineers and, of course, the children themselves.

W*: What was the inspiration behind the design?
AZ: Perhaps more than inspired, we were highly aware of the local conditions. We tried to propose an architecture with a strong connection to the site and to the community, while using a coherent construction method that was affordable and could be assembled quickly to meet the demands of the brief. We were inspired by the children’s energy and imagination and we wanted the building to provide enough shade for them to play in comfort and safety, in a place where temperatures can reach up to 40 degrees centigrade.

W*: What was the single most important thing you had to address through your solution? 
AZ: To help increase the children’s sense of belonging. Living away from their families for a week or longer, it was difficult for them to feel at home within the existing dormitories which they shared with many other students. We achieved this through the use of locally-sourced materials, the scale – which allowed for more privacy and play – and also evoking and referencing the peoples’ culture in the building. 

Another important issue that we dealt with was the proximity of the site to any big urban centre. As everything was so far away, we designed a building that we could pre-fabricate and assemble as quickly as possible. The entire timber structure was prefabricated near São Paulo, using CNC machines, while the bricks (the heaviest part of the building) were prefabricated on the construction site.

W*: What else are you working on at the moment?
AZ: We are doing some competitions, a community centre for indigenous people in Xingu, a place close to the Amazon Forest and another Children Village with Rosenbaum for the Bradesco Foundation.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Aleph Zero website

Class is back in session this autumn as WeWork reveals its first foray into education: WeGrow, a school reimagined as an educative playscape at the heart of New York City, for three-to-nine year olds.

Realised in partnership with Danish architects Bjarke Ingels Group, (Ingels himself joined WeWork as chief architect earlier in 2018), the 10,000 sq ft school is housed inside the co-working network’s Manhattan HQ, and resonates its passion for connectivity, growth and collaboration, refreshed and updated for a younger generation.

Creativity is the new education hub’s cornerstone, a key trait upheld by WeWork and BIG as fundamental to a child’s development. Driven to encourage and stimulate creativity within, the two firms re-evaluated the learning landscape from the perspective of a child. Educative spaces are therefore modular to support the spontaneity of the imagination, and include an array of super-elliptic cubbyholes that encourage movement, play, contemplation and reading.

WeGrow features modular and flexible spaces. Photography: Laurian Ghinitoiu

Community sits at WeWork’s heart, and this translates fluently at its educational counterpart. Classrooms, flexible workshops, a multi-purpose studio, art studio and music room orbit a central communal space, which brings together two learning spaces and a verdant, focused study space called the magic meadow. Here, custom-designed mushroom shelving units are levelled for each corresponding age group, and puzzle tables and chairs by BIG come in both child and adult sizes, breaking down the age hierarchy between children, teachers and parents.

Natural imagery is further planted throughout to advocate a harmonious relationship with nature. A Laufen-tiled vertical garden hosts plants which are stimulated to grow by Gople lamps, BIG and Artemide’s innovative, plant-focused piece of lighting technology. Elsewhere, overhead acoustic felt clouds assume fingerprint, coral, landscape and moon patterns, teaching children about the many facets of our planet’s ecosystem.

‘WeGrow was created to unleash the creative potential of all generations through design,’ states Bjarke Ingels. ‘With this first location in New York City, we have created a space to facilitate and accommodate WeGrow's transformative approach to learning because as life evolves, so should the framework in which we live in.’

WeGrow is the latest in a new wave of WeWork projects, which includes its new Rise by We gym and wellness club, which also debuted in New York in 2017.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the WeGrow website, the WeWork website and the BIG website

ADDRESS

110 West 19th Street
Chelsea
Manhattan
New York, NY 10011

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A lofty timber framed barn with a pitched roof designed by Feilden Fowles is the final installment at Waterloo City Farm in London. The urban farm was established in 2014 on a site owned by Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital and developed under a ‘meanwhile-use lease’ which allows temporary use prior to longer term development. The farm has since become a destination for schools, community activities and the site of the architects’ own studio.

Created for the purpose of education, the barn holds an insulated classroom for 30 children to learn. It has an important social mandate, to provide a safe and inspiring space for inner city children at risk of exclusion from school. The farm was founded by three organisations – Wiltshire-based community and youth support enterprise Jamie’s Farm, Waterloo-based charity Oasis and architecture practice Feilden Fowles – all of which shared a unifying interest in education and community and pooled resources and funds to create the Waterloo City Farm.

‘The new barn is particularly significant because in London it’s crucial that we have reflective, calm spaces that encourage children to engage with creative tasks and to informally share their thinking about life and home,’ says Jamie Feilden, CEO, Jamie’s Farm.

The design by Feilden Fowles, the practice in charge of the masterplan and all buildings on site, includes a stepped roof that encourages natural ventilation, polycarbonate roof lights to bring in plenty of natural light and a picture window overlooking the busy London street scene beyond the farm.

The barn joins earlier structures all inspired by agricultural architecture – the animal pens made of rough sawn British larch, the outdoor kitchen, growing area and Feilden Fowles’ own studio constructed from a solid Douglas fir timber frame, clad with detailed corrugated Onduline bitumen sheets. These are all brought together with a central ‘street' that runs through the masterplan bringing together shared outdoor spaces with landscape design and planting by Dan Pearson Studio.

Each form has been designed to demonstrate a rational and low-cost architecture, providing a model for future working and educational spaces that could be repeated and reconstructed elsewhere. The prefabricated timber frames can be deconstructed and rebuilt and mechanical fixings can be removed without damage to the structure.

Combining architectural experience with entrepreneurial spirit, Feilden Fowles provided architectural services in lieu of rent and fitted in desk space for the two further organisations within the studio. A contribution from the practice of £20,000 for the barn cladding has enabled the barn to be rented out.

The farm has enabled important community activity to take place in London. Jamie’s Farm, which provides support for disadvantaged young people to thrive through farming, community networks and therapy, has been able to expand its activities to London, working alongside Oasis Waterloo, a local charity providing support for children, with mental health charities and alcohol rehabilitation groups, which has had new opportunities through the farm for providing support for local people.

With its schedule of jazz evenings, workshops, markets and gardening activities for the whole community, the Waterloo City Farm is an asset to its central London borough and an example of how architecture and enterprise can provide solutions to the capital’s social and economic crises.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Feilden Fowles website, the Jamie’s Farm website, the Oasis Waterloo website and the Dan Pearson Studio website

Maki & Associates, led by Fumihiko Maki, has designed a new London headquarters for the Aga Khan Foundation, the Aga Khan Centre in Kings Cross. The Pritzker prize-winning architecture practice cut out a series of Islamic courtyards and gardens from a ten-storey block providing offices, a library and exhibition space. With its light-coloured limestone facade, modern engineering and unique sheltered spaces for reflection, the architecture promotes openness and contemplation through its form.

The building brings the Institute of Ismaili Studies, the Aga Khan University, the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations and the Aga Khan Foundation UK together, after existing for 40 years in London at various locations, in their joint mission to open up a dialogue and understanding of Muslim cultures. A new library at the centre of the building provides a home for the centres’ unique collections of books and manuscripts.

As well as a standard brief of practical requirements, the Aga Khan, the 49th hereditary Imam of the Shi’a Imami Ismaili Muslims, delivered a handwritten letter that was a conceptual brief for the architects, creatively written from the heart. He expressed his hopes of what the Aga Khan Centre could provide for its inhabitants, specifying a ‘network of unique rooftop spaces’ that could communicate the teachings and essence of Islamic culture.

‘If all the green spaces are relatively small, relatively secret and can be physically contained, then the overall approach gives us the opportunity to create for each space a sense of seclusion, environmental privilege and contained beauty,’ he wrote.

Gary Kamemoto, lead architect on the project and director at Maki & Associates, kept this letter on his desk throughout the entire design process, referring back to it for inspiration and guidance.

Developed into the plan are a series of terraces, gardens and courtyards. Each with different designs, influences and moods, they lift inspiration from Islamic garden traditions across the world from North Africa, Spain, Middle East, Persia and India. Maki & Associates worked with garden designers including Madison Cox, Nelson Byrd Woltz and Tom Stuart-Smith to create carefully crafted, unique feelings within each of the areas.

From the Spanish travertine-lined cloister with a purple garden of sage, rosemary and lavender; to the Syrian courtyard of red jasper tiles patterned with an abstraction of the Sufi script planted with pomegranate trees that reach up to a framed piece of sky; and the rooftop ‘community garden’ paved with Indian sandstone and planted with quince, hazelnut and wild strawberries for picking – each garden expresses a new facet of Islamic culture in an elegant and poetic way.

Kamemoto describes the Aga Khan Centre as ‘mille-feuille’ the delicately layered vanilla French pastry. ‘It’s layered vertically with different tones,’ he says of the architecture, through which the layered materials and design express the different functions within the building:  the ground floor is a layer of glass, letting the building become one with public space around it – a Turkish restaurant, stationary shop, café and exhibition space will bring people into the building, while an entrance at the north and the south of the plan allows it to be a permeable thoroughfare.

The library at the centre of the ‘vertical university campus’ on the second and third floors, is expressed through a glass double-height entrance. The upper floors above, with their square windows, hold the offices, with the top floor, the icing sugar on the top, is a peak of glass and light, a ceremonial space for the Aga Kahn foundation.

The building overlooks Cubitt Square in Kings Cross, where it neatly slots into the carefully planned masterplan, that specified the size and shape limits of the architecture to allow light to street level and the preservation of historic views.

While Kings Cross has an industrial architectural history of red, brown and black bricks, Kamemoto was inspired by the use of limestone in bands around windows at St Pancras. Further research revealed that it was a Portland Limestone, present in all buildings commissioned by the British crown in London – a material that can be seen in the architecture lining the historic crossroads of Regents and Oxford street. Kamemoto searched for a material that could reflect this royal heritage in a new way, finding the Calizia Capri hard limestone in Granada and Cordoba – Spanish cities known for their Islamic architecture.

In a subversion of the old buildings of central London where windows are recessed deep into their stone facades, the Aga Khan Centre’s windows sit flush against the stone in a continuous surface reflecting the modernism of a Mies van der Rohe skyscraper or a sculptural Bauhaus residence. ‘It’s a very modern building, but it's our interpretation of melding Islamic culture and the tradition of London architecture,’ says Kamemoto.

Inside, a silver travertine from Italy completes the flooring in the ground floor lobby and the central staircase that leads up to the first floor atrium. A huge artwork pulses 40m through heart of the building. The colourful waterfall of primary coloured gridded shapes is designed by Rasheed Aareen, a UK-based Pakistani artist, who was selected from a design competition.

Geometric patterning inspired by Islamic decorative art was used creatively by the architects across the building. For each out of the three buildings the architects have designed for the Aga Khan, Maki & Asociates have designed a unique pattern. At the Aga Khan centre in London, the pattern is based upon an octagonal shape, seen at first entry, repeating across the glass ground floor facade. Playing with the one-inch air gap between the insulated glass, the architects layered the opaque pattern twice, creating a three-dimensional pattern enhanced by light and shadow that hints at the Jali, the traditional Islamic screen. The pattern can be seen again in many different instances across the building such as embedded into the carpet, printed across material or carved into stone.

The Aga Khan Centre opens on 22 September 2018.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Maki & Associates website and the Aga Khan Centre website

The completion of Steven Holl’s Glassell School of Art in Houston, Texas, signals the delivery of the first phase of the American city’s major redevelopment of its Museum of Fine Art campus; it is also a key piece in the puzzle that will form an ‘essential center for Houston’s diverse and active art community’, says the school’s director Joseph Havel.  

The Glassell is the USA’s only museum-affiliated art school, recieving up to post-graduate students. The L-shaped structure features Holl’s signature abstract geometric shapes and light-play, as well as demonstrating the architect’s expertise in the typology; Steven Holl Architects are behind a wealth of education and art buildings across the country, including the Lewis Arts Complex at Princeton University (2017); and the Visual Arts Building at the University of Iowa (2016).

The building spans some 93,000 sq ft and features a range of naturally lit studios for adults and children. An accessible roof terrace, art galleries, a 75-seat auditorium, and a public coffee bar, as well as a striking centrepiece of a staircase with broad steps that can be used as a gathering space and a sort of ‘forum’, ensure this is a true public building that can be enjoyed by all.

‘Our building for the Glassell School is a key part of the overall strategy to shape the public spaces for the entire campus’, says Steven Holl. ‘The alternating concrete and glass panels create a porosity between indoors and out, and the gathering spaces – including the building’s walkable, sloping roof – provide a civic experience for students and the public alike, with spectacular views of the neighborhood and the city skyline.’

The new art building opened together with the complex’s The Brown Foundation, Inc. Plaza designed by Deborah Nevins & Associates in collaboration with Nevins & Benito Landscape Architecture, D.P.C. The entire campus redevelopment project – the country’s largest cultural project currently under construction – is set to reach full completion in 2020. 

INFORMATION 

For more information visit the website of Steven Holl Architects

The Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust has launched a co-working space for start-ups and small businesses working within the built environment in London. Designed by Gensler, the open-plan space is a mindful spot filled with colour and green plants that will inspire and empower its users.

Designated for networking, development and collaboration among emerging architects, designers and creatives, ‘Your Space’ will bring desk and event spaces to members who can choose between flexible or long-term memberships. Users can work across a variety of areas including the members’ studio, the residence space, meeting rooms and an event facility with a roof terrace.

The motivational setting, filled with natural daylight and colour, is designed to fuel collaboration and connectivity. This positive atmosphere manifests the emotional and physical healing process that the Trust has promoted since it was founded 20 years ago after the tragic death of Stephen Lawrence in London in 1993.

An informal seating area with a metal-framed inspiration board

The centre focuses on the Trust’s work supporting young people from disadvantaged backgrounds aged 13-30. In 2017 alone, the SLCT supported over 2,000 young people through training, mentoring, bursaries and other activities.

The global architecture, design and planning firm, Gensler, donated time and expertise alongside fit-out contractor BW Workplace Experts and branding agency LBA to reimagine space within the existing centre that opened its doors in 2007.

The team reconfigured three floors of the centre, opening space up and evolving its purpose while maintaining the spirit of its aims. Solid walls were replaced with glazed partitions and an upbeat glowing orange colour was painted across the floors, walls and ceilings of the centre, which connects the different spaces together.

See more creative co-working spaces here

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust website and the Gensler website

Adding a splash of colour to spaces both inside and out of Spain, award-winning creative consultancy Masquespacio is widely acclaimed for making a bold statement or two.

Part of the Valencia-based studio’s growing portfolio is their recent collaboration with Dutch hotel group The Student Hotel, which sees the redesign of the first of two student-only campus locations in the Marina and Poble Sec districts of Barcelona. With ten locations in nine European cities under their belt already and more opening soon, the latest student residence project is created for the co-living and co-working lifestyle.

The four-tiered 21,000 sq m structure is home to 500 rooms and an array of communal spaces, ranging from gaming areas to open and private lounges to an outdoor swimming pool, designed to encourage social interactions and stimulate learning without confining students to a single room.

The interior sets primary hues, potted plants and playful neon lighting against an industrial backdrop of exposed brick walls and concrete columns, accentuated by softer elements like draping, pink fabrics. Fittingly reflecting the city’s Mediterranean setting and referencing Spanish design institutions including Sancal, EstudiHac and Barcelona-based designer Isaac Piñeiro of Nadadora, most notably in its seating, hints of postmodernism are mixed with local and bespoke touches throughout, such as a custom-made bench designed by Masquespacio.

Blending these visual elements with The Student Hotel’s spirited lifestyle, the brazen Barcelona outlet provides a modern destination – both in ethos and looks – for an international student community who places value on social exchange – in real life.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Student Hotel website

ADDRESS

TSH Campus Barcelona Marina
C/Sancho de Ávila 22
08018 Barcelona

TSH Campus Barcelona Poble Sec
Av. Parallel 101
08004 Barcelona

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Open space isn’t something easily found in London, but at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park it comes in abundance. Its expanses stretch from the canals of Hackney Wick to Stratford’s Westfield shopping centre – there's even a busy shuttle bus to transport people across it. The park is home to Here East, a business, technology and creative campus, developed by iCITY from its previous life as the Olympic press centre; the 72,000 sq m ‘industrial shed’ was once the temporary home to 200 TV studios and the Infinity Data Centre, a vast black box filled with servers making it one of the most well-connected places in the country – an ideal advantage to its new purpose as a hub for technology.

For a claustrophobic Londoner, this space reeks of potential. Visions of a well-planned, pedestrian-friendly, dare-I-say affordable new east London are hard to keep at bay. Bringing this fantasy a step closer is University College London and The Bartlett, which have moved into the Here East block with a new architecture, engineering, computer science and real estate campus, transporting with them a hoard of creative and mathematical brains to the growing community – and this is just the first phase, UCL East located on another site close by is set to open by 2022.

Designed by architecture practice Hawkins\Brown, the new campus is designated for collaborative and cross-disciplinary work. After designing the masterplan for the evolution of the site from its Olympic past, Hawkins\Brown were ideal collaborators for the Bartlett and UCL’s new space. Not only were they familiar with the Here East campus and concept, but the team already worked with UCL Estates and the Bartlett on the deep retrofit of the Gordon street building, an old Bloomsbury terrace in need of modernisation that Wallpaper* visited in 2016 for a fashion shoot and also Hampstead road, a fit out in a former BHS warehouse. Hawkins\Brown are well-versed in finding ways to repurpose and bring life back to used London spaces.

This vast space has enabled UCL’s new Real Estate Institution and Robotics Lab to be born, and the Faculty for the Built Environment and the Engineering Sciences Faculty to expand. It has also allowed The Bartlett to take some risks on a new undergraduate course, new combined master’s programmes and some general cross-contamination – encouraged by the design of the space.

Working across a 6200 sq m segment of Here East, one of the biggest challenges for Hawkins\Brown was daylight, which was only available from one side of the site: ‘The space is 100m long – it was originally a big dark empty shed and we had to negotiate human occupation with a building that was never designed for human occupation,’ says Tom Noonan, project architect and associate at Hawkins\Brown.

It’s at the edge of the plan, where the natural daylight is plentiful, that a ground floor studio space hosts 180 workstations and a first floor space is the new home to the UCL Real Estate Institute. A friendly stepped auditorium space is a buffer between the daylight-filled spaces and the two main labs positioned further into the core of the space; one for 3D tracking, scanning and large fabrication and another cyclic environmental and mechanical multi-scale test lab. These in turn are surrounded by smaller controlled zones for wet trades, nano-robotics, thermal studies, tissue culture, welding and much more.

The Gordon street building in Bloomsbury is mostly desktop based, but this campus is totally flexible, loose-fit and fluid ready to be adapted as technologies change and courses develop, explains Manpreet Dhesi, communications manager for The Bartlett. ‘It’s not a clean desk policy’, says Dhesi of the work spaces. ‘It’s less-programmed because the functionality might change in four years. While Bloomsbury is drawing based. This place is about making.’

‘In practice there is far more collaboration in work and cross-fertilisation than in academia, where it’s very siloed,’ says architect Noonan. ‘To think back to studying in the old Wates house, it was just a closed studio with drawing boards, I was there for a few hours a week. Now you’re working next to computer sciences students working on human surgery with robots. There’s no boundaries between each of the disciplines, you have engineers and architects working in the same volume, so its a real learning curve. There’s real opportunities to learn from each other.’

Starting students off with the advantage of a common language between architecture and engineering is one of the aims of The Bartlett with this new campus – to change the perception of architectural education and civil engineering, as well as bringing the potential to collaborate with industry. For large scale projects such as Here East, Hawkins\Brown work directly with engineers every day. For this project they collaborated with BuroHappold, an integrated engineering firm, which covered structural engineering, mechanical engineering, acoustics and served as electrical and fire consultants on the project.

Across the site, spaces flow into each other easily, offering sight lines from studio to lab. Off the mezzanine project space – where there is a distinct smell of burnt sugar and the new undergraduate class is at work collaborating in small groups on projects on the floor – juliet-style balconies overlook the labs below, where a carbon aeroplane wing stands next to a small robot on wheels (the UCL Robotics Institute have a partnership with Airbus). An open walkway passes beneath the balconies through the main lab, allowing students to always see what’s happening in the spaces that are partioned with transparent polycarbonate screens.

As well as sight lines, material continuation occurs across the site. The stepped auditorium, that resembles an open-air Roman forum more than your average university lecture hall, has a bright yellow coloured floor, and the yellow is manifested in other areas of the building through cushions on the benches or the colour of the walls in the Real Estate rooms.

The auditorium is built of smooth plywood joinery, another material that continues across the whole site – ‘it’s a way of softening it; its cheap, its durable, its better than plasterboard,’ says Noonan, of the material which is used in sculptural staircases, neat shelving/work space niches and inbuilt benches across the site.

The shape of the auditorium is similarly considered and creative. It swells and shifts into smaller or larger stepped areas in different places in an almost modular way – while it can serve as a 350-seat lecture hall, it can also fit a range of smaller sessions: ‘All of the timber strip is acoustic. There’s soft felt behind there which absorbs the acoustics – so you can have multiple sessions,’ says Noonan. ‘You can hear people but its not intelligible. All of this was electro-acoustically modelled by BuroHappold for scenarios of different populations of people occupying different parts,’ he says. This auditorium is not just an academic box that no one uses outside of class, but a living, breathing space for informal meetings, lunch and crits.

The whole site has a welcoming campus feel, different from the central London university vibe where terraced buildings are often patched together with extensions and strange circulation systems. Step outside into Here East’s long central plaza (where food trucks park up at lunchtime), and while you won’t find the British Museum or Senate House library, you’ll find other creative forces at play – Ford’s Smart Mobility Hub, Studio Wayne McGregor, Matches Fashion HQ and the V&A, which recently unveiled proposals for a new collection and research centre at Here East. University education, and academia, has never felt so exciting, experimental, future-focused and – useful.

See more campus architecture here

INFORMATION

For more information visit the Hawkins\Brown website and the UCL Bartlett website

Stanton Williams has added a new ‘layer’ to Cambridge University's Judge Business School with a contemporary extension to the former hospital building that was converted by architect John Outram into a centre for business education in the early 90s.

Reflecting the progressive role of networking in business communities and the evolution of contemporary education practices, the new four storey 5,000 sq m wing promotes social interactions with open and adaptable classrooms, sizeable break-out spaces and a generous foyer with broad circulation around the facility.

While the classical proportions of Outram’s ostentatious Cambridge Judge Business School may have dictated the room heights and floor levels of the new extension, beyond that the new wing is an aesthetic departure from its mothership – offering simple echoes and tactful hints instead such as the cream-coloured brick and slim colonnaded windows.

When Cambridge University donors Sir Paul Judge and Simon Sainsbury commissioned John Outram to redesign the former Addenbrookes hospital building in 1991, the building aspired to elevating the civic responsibility of education and business in Cambridge where a science and technology orientated business community was starting to grow.

The architecture, which Outram described as ‘great polychromatic temple’, therefore reflected the ambitions of the Cambridge Judge Business School to be a ‘player on the global stage’. The new wing, with its simple, smooth and direct design, communicates the achievement of this goal and the top-rated School’s position at the heart of ‘Silicon Fen’.

Stanton Williams’ sensitive and forward-looking ‘layer’ is another stage in the architectural history of the Cambridge Judge Business School site, which has grown from hospital, to business school, to global centre.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Stanton Williams website

A rapidly evolving technology cluster competing for the status of Europe’s Silicon Valley, Paris-Saclay will cover 385 sq km and is set to accumulate 20 per cent of France’s research capacities by 2020.

Part of this enormous project is the new campus for CentraleSupélec, focused on engineering and systems sciences and welcoming 4,200 students this school year. This is possible thanks to a 40,000 sq m facility designed by OMA and a 25,000 sq m building by Swiss architects Annette Gigon and Mike Guyer. Planned cooperatively, the two structures host educational and research spaces, but also a few shared areas – from a sports hall and a theatre, to a language centre and a canteen – to be used by the entire campus.

For OMA’s team, led by Ellen van Loon and Rem Koolhaas, this was an opportunity to demonstrate how architecture can ‘contribute to a new educational, social and civic dimension’. Named Lab City, their project steps away from the conventional idea of a massive, introverted box within an urban area and proposes instead a small, animated city within a city.

Manhattan’s gridded block system comes to mind when one finds themselves under a gigantic transparent roof, in the midst of classrooms, labs and offices designed as separate ‘buildings’ and connected by a network of alleyways. Each space has large windows facing the ‘streets’, while the rooftops of these mini-buildings provide an additional 2,000 sq m of ‘outdoor’ space intended for more informal use, from lounges to improvised classrooms. The diagonal ‘main street’ continues outside, connecting the campus with the upcoming station of the Grand Paris Express.

Through mixture and openness, the project enables interaction between students, researchers and administration. The director’s area, for instance, is made largely accessible; shared facilities can be leased to external users. Besides, the layout includes two ‘plazas’, with an open-space cafeteria filled by a snacking and laptopping population throughout the day rather than being isolated and open for a few hours only. Classrooms have entire walls acting like whiteboards; one can write on the outward-facing glass walls as well. The large amphitheatre, divisible into three separate segments, serves as both a conference space and an extra classroom. A transparent ETFE roof with a sunshading pattern above the ‘plazas’ and ‘rooftop terraces’ floods the Lab City with light even on rainy days.

By 2019, the campus will have new neighbours: Renzo Piano’s design for École Normale Supérieure and a telecommunications school by next year’s Venice Biennale of Architecture curators, Dublin-based Grafton Architects. Further away, but still within Paris-Saclay, a Sou Fujimoto-led team of French and Japanese architects will deliver the future learning centre for the École Polytechnique.

INFORMATION

For more information, vistit the OMA website

Brutalist buildings often represent a distinct time period in the span of a city’s life – they are icons of change, modernity and idealism. For Boston, brutalism represents the period of transformation in the 1960s and 70s that was known as New Boston. The latest in Blue Crow Media’s brutalist maps series traces this period with over 40 concrete buildings, unfolding the story of Boston’s most controversial phase of building.

Telling the story are editors Chris Grimley, Michael Kubo, and Mark Pasnik, authors of Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston 1960-1976, who chart the revival and rise of Boston after a mass exodus of factory work to the countryside, which allowed architects to plan infrastructure and design the buildings that still shape public life in Boston today.

The trio bookend the occurrence of New Boston between the arrival of Edward J Logue as a ‘powerful and visionary leader of the Boston redevelopment Authority in 1960’ and ‘the reopening of Quincy Market and Faneil Hall Marketplace at the nations Bicentennial in 1976’, which signalled a ‘shift in attitude’ away from the brutalist style.

At the heart of the city, Boston’s Government Center complex was structured by the arrival of key brutalist buildings marked on the map: the ribbed concrete Government Service Center (Paul Rudolph), the powerfully cantilevering Boston City Hall (Kallmann, McKinnell and Knowles), and the dual-towered John F Kennedy Federal Office Building (The Architects Collaborative/Walter Gropius).

While these bold buildings have been held up as examples of progressive American architecture, they also have controversial reputations. On the same complex, the Government Center Garage, completed in 1970, designed by Kallman and Mckinney with Samuel Glaser Associates is unfortunately destined to a popular demise. It will be demolished in part to make way for a new mixed use development – including a residential tower by CBT Architects and office tower by Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects – phase one of which broke ground this year.

Meanwhile other brutalist buildings continue to function as pillars in the community. The map pinpoints a number of education buildings and libraries including the Harvard Science Center (Sert, Jackson and Associates); the Josiah Quincy School (The Architects Collaborative); Madison Paul High School (Marcel Breuer and Tician Papachristou); and the Stratton Student Center (Eduarso Catalano), as well as the Boston University School of Law and Education (Sert, Jackson and Associates); the Charlestown Branch Library (Eduardo Catalano); and the Gutman Library (Benjamin Thompson and Associates).

It was the prominence of these institutions, and the people working at them, that drove the brutalist style forwards. Educators Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Josep Luis Sert had laid down the conceptual foundations of Brutalism by teaching a new generation of architects – including Paul Rudolph, IM Pei, Henry Cobb and Araldo Cossutt – the value of function and community to architecture.

Boston is significantly the home of Le Corbusier’s only North American building, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, completed in 1963, which expresses the architect’s central modernist theories in rough concrete and glass. The building was designed in collaboration with Guillermo Jullian de la Fuentes and Josep Lluis Sert, who was Dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design at the time.

Working towards a contining education of the brutalist legacy across the world, Blue Crow Media is spreading its wings to cities worldwide. The Boston map follows brutalist adventures in Washington DC, Paris, Sydney and others, with the whole series helping to cement the future existence of the iconic style across the world.

INFORMATION
Brutalist Boston, £8, published by Blue Crow Media

The Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) is taking up residence at Richard Rogers’ landmarked Wimbledon House in London, which will host the new Richard Rogers fellowship programme, a three-month residency scheme for professionals working across the built environment.

Lord Rogers designed the single storey modernist house in the 1960s for his parents to live in and it has now been restored by Gumuchdjian Architects, and adapted to suit the needs to the Harvard GSD fellowship residents, as well as opening up space for programmed events.

Wimbledon House, gifted to Harvard GSD by Lord Rogers and Ruth Rogers, is an ideal new home for the fellowship, inspired by the architect’s work expanding cross-disciplinarily investigation and social engagement in collaboration with urbanism and architecture. Additionally, the heritage status of the house will now be maintained due to its continued use as a residence.

The fully glazed façade integrates the rooms of the house with the gardens

The design for Wimbledon House was very experimental for its time, following a modular format that would allow for the renewal of technology and developing needs as time passed, while providing a basic adaptable structure. It was a concept that Lord Rogers had begun developing with the Pompidou and later Lloyd’s, and tested out on a smaller residential scale with Wimbledon House.

Restoration was spearheaded by Gumuchdjian Architects – founder Philip Gumuchdjian worked with the Richard Rogers Partnership for 18 years before setting up his own practice, and supported by Paddy Pugh of John McAslan + Partners, who previously worked at English Heritage. The approach to restoring the building focused on maintaining the character of the design, instead of the fabric – three quarters of the envelope had to be replaced due to asbestos.

After several renovations, the two steel and glass pavilions were returned to their 1990 status, which meant the removal of recently added buildings and a refurbishment of the interior. The courtyards and gardens were returned to their original open design with the collaboration of landscape architect Todd Longstaffe-Gowan. The pavilions and the outdoor spaces were conceived by Lord Rogers as the core modules of the design that would remain constant, a concept that has been returned to.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Havard GSD website and the Gumuchdjian Architects website

Architects at 6a have designed an environmentally friendly courtyard building for students' accommodation at Churchill College in Cambridge. Nestled into nature on the spacious campus, the blocky brutalist design of the building is softened with untreated reclaimed oak facades.

Cowan Court is the first completely new courtyard building to be added to the modernist campus of solid, low lying architecture since the 1960s. Quoting the original buildings designed by Sheppard Robson, the architects matched the square courtyard size to existing courtyards and followed the strong horizontal emphasis.

Churchill College, which was founded as a memorial to Winston Churchill, is located a short distance from the centre in West Cambridge and consequently Cowan Court is set comfortably apart from the main site, reached by a short path through open green space and surrounded by playing fields and trees.

The three storey building, which houses 68 rooms for students, is covered with untreated reclaimed oak cladding and on the ground level, new pale oak cladding lines the covered corridor which runs around the courtyard. These cloisters provide a sheltered outdoor space, with the central court filled with bark and trees, intended for students to congregate.

With triple glazing, passive ventilation and super insulation, the building is neatly designed to reduce and conserve energy use. In addition, solar electricity and rainwater collection schemes contribute to its environmentally friendly design.

Subtly monolithic, Cowan Court rises from the landscape gently on a misty day, yet also blends into nature like a sensible bird-watching hide on the Norfolk broads – humble and defiantly understated. Excelling in its brilliantly functional and environmentally focused design, Cowan Court is a beautiful satellite to its Sheppard Robson mother ship.

INFORMATION
For more information, visit the 6a Architects website

The UCL Bartlett School of Architecture in Bloomsbury, London, has been redesigned and extended by 3,000 sq m by Hawkins\Brown. The deep retrofit of the former building, Wates House – built in 1974 and located on a restricted site part of the Bloomsbury Conservation zone – will provide a new modern and adaptable space to allow the leading architectural school to innovate its programme and fulfil its public facing role.

After operating at a spatial minimum for 15 years, increased space and adaptability were at the top of Bartlett School of Architecture director Bob Sheil’s list. He explains that while the Bartlett could have been seen as a ‘nightmare client’, they were just eager for functionality, rather than an architectural statement: ‘The Bartlett is about the people and the work they produce – we don’t need to be distracted.’

‘They ticked all the boxes,’ he adds of Hawkins\Brown, whose building reflects the broadening role of the Bartlett. ‘You can’t forecast the future of architectural education.’ With the growing popularity of the Bartlett’s non-accredited courses, he sees an architecture based on ‘titles’ as an unsustainable educational model. ‘Architecture is one of the most broad, diverse and liberal domains – it’s not only about educating architects,’ he says.

Increased studio and informal spaces where doors have been removed reflect broad functions and encourage social activity and exchange. Euan Macdonald, a partner at Hawkins\Brown, sees the design as a ‘vessel for the academic activity of the school’ which is ‘lean and hard-working’, offering a network of spaces to suit different activities.

The architects brought the facade up to the property boundary, adding 1.5m to the floor-plate to fill the site footprint above ground and creating a new entrance with double-height glazing to connect the school to the street and open it up to the public. A fifth and sixth floor were added to increase space, as well as a full height extension to the south.

The architects met challenges along the way, overcoming them through diplomacy, design and engineering. ‘Initially we worked hard to demonstrate that the anticipated scope of our original brief, a £5m refurbishment and window replacement, was not going to provide a sustainable, holistic or long-term solution to the Bartlett's fundamental problem – a chronic shortage of space,’ says Macdonald.

Working with the existing structure also threw up obstacles: ‘A final key challenge was how to design a heavy, masonry building with significant additional mass and area, when both the sub- and superstructure of the original building were close to their design capacity. Through close collaboration with the structural engineer we developed a lightweight structural solution for all new spaces, and selected a slim depth (70mm) brick that fulfilled all these constraining criteria,’ says Macdonald.

Retaining the original structure was symbolic, as well as environmentally sound: ‘We also wanted to reveal the story of the old building’s transformation and modification,’ says Macdonald. The concrete has been left in its raw state and complemented with typically industrial finishes within.

INFORMATION 

For more information, visit the Hawkins\Brown Architects website