Architecture firm eba uses curved double-glazing to create a new entrance for a Quebec City college.
The Collège Saint-Charles-Garnier, a private high school located in Quebec City, occupies a 1930s neo-classic building extended with various wings overtime. The students needed a welcoming and universally accessible entrance. The client’s demands also involved renovating the existing gymnasium and regrouping the Art studios in a poorly lit basement.
One of the most historically significant structures in the Pacific Northwest, Providence Academy is nearly 150 years old. The Academy—built by the Sisters of Providence in 1873 and designed by Mother Joseph Pariseau—has served at various times as an orphanage, office space, and boarding school. The boarding school, the last significant occupant, ceased operation with the graduating class of 1966, and in the years since, the building has stood mostly empty and neglected.
In 2009, a local group of civic-minded entrepreneurs, recognizing the inherent value of the legacy building and its important proximity to downtown Vancouver’s urban core, acquired the 64,000-square-foot building. The group worked to stabilize the facility to ensure the building’s continued viability for its yet-to-be determined future. In 2012, The Historic Trust, the organization charged with preservation and management of properties on the nearby Fort Vancouver Historic Site, and Venerable Properties hired SERA for a series of studies to determine Providence Academy’s potential for future use. The result of that study was a multi-phased vision to transform the derelict facility into a re-invigorated hub of activity for the community and the region. “From SERA’s earliest beginnings, we have been working to preserve and breathe new life into older buildings,” notes the firm. “We are passionate believers that a great city can reflect both its past and its present, and that revitalized older buildings create a richness that you don’t get any other way.”
Located at the heart of the city centre campus, and designed in collaboration with Toronto based practice, Montgomery Sisam Architects, the Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship (MCEIE) serves the University’s wide range of engineering disciplines, from heavy mechanical engineering through to computer engineering.
The Centre signals a new era for engineering education through a design that encourages group work outside the traditional seminar room, providing dynamic and fl exible environments that break down artifi cial barriers between people, foster collaboration, encourage active learning and accelerate innovation.
Occupying the last unbuilt site along the University’s historic St George Street, the building acknowledges its signifi cant position as a building in the round, providing a transparent and permeable ground fl oor that creates both physical and visual connections to its surroundings.
The renewal of the school campus ‘Guldensporencollege’ and the ‘Sint-Amands Basisschool’ in Kortrijk is part of the DBFM-programme ‘Schools of Tomorrow’ and in 2011 came out as a winning design of the Open Call of the ‘Team Vlaams Bouwmeester’. It is a project for five school buildings at two campuses within Kortrijk town centre: campus Diksmuidekaai (‘Kaai’) and campus Leiekant at the existing Pleinschool (‘Plein’). The campus Kaai is now accessible to the public using a north-south axis, which actually carries all other future developments. This axis for pedestrians and cyclists is really a chain of green spaces and it also intensifies the ‘community school’ logic, in that the use of sports complexes and infrastructure is shared. This axis also houses the new main entrances for the different buildings of the secondary school. The campus’ west side was provided with a new entrance for motorised traffic, a kiss&ride zone and a connecting parking lot. The location of the parking allows for apart from a more formal, public axis an informal, secondary axis for pupils and teaching staff. This secondary axis allows for short circulation routes not only between the clearly separated entities of the different age and education groups of the secondary and primary schools, but also to the communal functions of these entities, such as the canteen, PE and study rooms and multi-media library. The new bike shed, covered play areas and central campus square are also linked to this secondary axis.
Located within the boundaries of the existing school, the project is divided following the natural topography of the site : In the lower part, the recreational center directly connected to the public space benefits from an underexploited courtyard. On the upper level the new classrooms are oriented towards the current school courtyard. The complex takes advantage of an East-West exposure and quietly fits into its surroundings.
The materiality chosen for the recreational center is in continuity with the existing school in concrete. A mineral and monolithic shape emerges from the existing topography. The interior spaces surprise by their brightness and transparency brought by the patios and the warm atmosphere of the wood cladding. The upper part, which houses three classrooms is built in a mixed concrete and wood structure.
Beaver Country Day School is an independent school for grades 6-12 near Boston that boasts an innovative pedagogy based on student-centered design. A new Research + Design facility was commissioned to reflect the ambition of the faculty and students to expand the nature of their school. The project involved the transformation of an existing library and a new addition that created a connected campus, placing the new R+D Center at the heart of it.
Across five structures built over the span of 90 years, there was an 8-foot elevation difference from adjacent floor levels, requiring an extensive ramp system to adjoin the levels. Thus, the design includes a three-story connecting “Bridge” that sponsors a variety of student-centered spaces: study carrels, presentation spaces, and lounge areas.
Lead Architects: Katherine Faulkner, AIA; Nader Tehrani; Arthur Chang, AIA; Gretchen Neeley, AIA; Project Team: Jin Kyu Lee, Thomas Tait, Tim Wong, AIA
Acoustic Consultants: Acentech Engineering
Civil Engineer: Nitsch Engineering, Inc.
MEP / FP Engineer: AHA Consulting Engineers
Structural Engineer: Souza, True and Partners, Inc.
Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, on Northwestern’s campus and with views of the Chicago skyline directly to the south, every element in the design of the new Global Hub for Kellogg is inspired by the School’s vision to rehabilitate business as a constructive and positive force for the benefit of humanity.
The large, five-story LEED Platinum building is designed to optimize flexible, adaptable spaces for learning and collaboration at every scale, from 2 to 20, to 200 to 2000. All program spaces converge at the centre, at the Collaboration Plaza, a three-story atrium where students, faculty and visiting leaders gather. The Faculty Summit, a two-story piazza, forms the intellectual soul of the Global Hub, and offers a place for faculty to discuss, debate and find solutions to the pressing issues of the day.
The Cistercian monastery in Wettingen is a cultural monument of national importance. When the cantonal school moved into the monastery premises in 1979, the school’s sports hall with a swimming pool was constructed on the common land outside the monastery area. To maintain the historical view of the monastery, the sports hall and swimming pool were built underground, around a deep courtyard with longitudinal sides that provided the adjoining gymnasiums with daylight. The planned extension of the sports halls is also required to adhere to this principle and is thus being developed underground.
A World of Children – Parents don’t come inside, queridos!
What does a school in the 21st century look like at the transition to the knowledge society? In a rural area in Ecuador. At 2600m altitude. On a slope with 56m gradient. Climate-friendly … The school of the 21st century is open and unique at the same time. We do not know today how we will learn tomorrow, everything imaginable should be possible. We want to build regionally reasonable, but with international standards. High tech and low tech, new and old at the same time.
We take the topography and work with it.
The space is kept as good as possible in its sensation, the slope of the property is understood as an opportunity for the formulation of an exciting sequence of rooms, terraces and views. Each room has the best view of the valley, to Cuenca, while enjoying direct access to the open space.
Project Team: Anna Popelka, Georg Poduschka, Jakub Dvorak, Valerie Assmus, Maximilian Bertl
In the middel of the southern Ecuadorian Andes right away from the city Cuenca – UNESCO World Cultural Capital – PPAG are building the German School Stiehle.
Turin-based architectural firm BDR bureau completes the transformation of the new Enrico Fermi School in Turin, the winning project of an international competition launched in 2016 by “Torino Fa Scuola”. The initiative, promoted by the Compagnia di San Paolo and the Fondazione Agnelli, in collaboration with the City of Turin and “Fondazione per la Scuola”, embodies a cultural, pedagogical and architectural reflection on the new learning spaces of the Italian school.
The existing school building, built in the 1960s in the Nizza Millefonti district between the former industrial area of the Lingotto and the Po river in the south-east area of Turin, has been extended and it is functionally rethought. The new educational needs – in which the school becomes an integral part of the community and merges with the urban fabric – represents the future of education and architecture for the Italian school.
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