On the periphery of a nondescript residential area in Groningen, Gianni Cito designed a large building for two schools, two childcare centres and a playground. From the outset, the end users played an important role in this project, engaging in regular dialogue with the architect during workshops. One of the significant outcomes was the proposal to share out-of-school care facilities, play rooms, gym, kitchen, staff room, science classroom and the playground.
Nowadays, people in large urban centers tend to lose contact with nature, while rural areas are prone to disappear due to migration towards big cities. The city of Badong on the banks of the Yangtze River presents an integral solution for both scenarios. Even more, its stunning views of the surrounding mountains and river make of this location a unique corner of the world.
Inspired by the trinomial cube, a primary teaching tool in Montessori education, Paul Michael Davis Architects’ (PMDA) designed an addition to a rural campus that merges the school’s pedagogy with the surrounding natural environment.
Each of the twenty-seven blocks in the trinomial cube is represented by a window. The largest window is purposefully located on the north facade of the building because that side receives passive light, and therefore won’t add excessive heat gain or glare to the structure.
This large secondary school campus is located 90km east of Brussels. The new development comprises a new classroom building, a technology centre and a sports hall.
The 3 storey classroom building is located to one side of the main playground at the front of the campus, providing a greater sense of enclosure and creating a new point of arrival. With a total area of 2000 m², the building includes a reception, an open learning centre, laboratories and classrooms, along with offices for administration.
The City of Greven (Münsterland) is located in a region with a great tradition in brick construction. Also the main building of the Augustinianum from the 1960s has a striking exposed brickwork and so it seemed sensible to design the new construction with a brick façade. The selected waterstruck brick with its loamy, brown-grey colour is burnt only a few kilometers away. Its colours merge watercolour-like into one another, whereby the darker heads put distinctive accents on the façade built up in a wild pattern.
Originally designed to house both Casper College and Natrona County High School, the Collegiate Gothic-inspired complex was constructed between 1924 and 1927 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This project included a complete renovation of the existing 145,000-square-feet historic building and a 137,000-square-feet addition. To ensure continued occupancy during construction, the project was divided into six phases of construction spanning almost five years.
Article source: Ignacio Urquiza, Bernardo Quinzaños, Centro de Colaboración Arquitectónica + Rodrigo Valenzuela Jerez + Camilo Moreno
This project is located in a growing area of the city of Aguascalientes. The unknown future development of the adjoining lots guided the creation of an inward-looking campus. The campus’s compositional and functional strategy lies in the central plaza’s design: a series of concentric rings radiate outward from this large meeting space, giving meaning and shape to the program and use of the project. The courtyard is subdivided by the Learning Center, creating a multipurpose plaza as well as a contemplative garden for the school’s most public activities. A structural arcade creates the perimeter circulations around the courtyards and is followed by the classroom blocks and the project’s general program. The façade or structural perimeter responds to the use and orientation of each of its parts.
Tags: Aguascalientes, Mexico Comments Off on Escuela Bancaria y Comercial (EBC) in Aguascalientes, Mexico by Ignacio Urquiza, Bernardo Quinzaños, Centro de Colaboración Arquitectónica + Rodrigo Valenzuela Jerez + Camilo Moreno
Article source: Behnisch Architekten with SRG Partnership, Inc.
Located in downtown Portland, the new Karl Miller Center is uniquely integrated with the city’s rich network of public open spaces and diverse urban uses. Questioning the full-block archetype that dominates the typical 200' x 200' city block of Portland, the building design appears as two distinct structures sharing a city block – the renovated existing building, a 100,000sf 1970's structure retrofitted with a metal panel facade system broken up by an irregular composition of punched windows, and a new dynamic, shifting 45,000sf addition, clad in regionally sourced Alaskan Yellow Cedar. This approach, coupled with a series of terracing external green spaces and new circulation pathways linking the urban center, local parks, transportation stops, and nearby campus buildings, enhances the public realm by providing a more diverse streetscape. A one-story grade differential between 6th Avenue and Broadway, populated with public oriented spaces, creates two ground levels, further activating the exterior plazas and the atrium and heightening the activity within and around the building.
Roseland University Prep is a small, unique, college preparatory charter high school in the heart of Roseland, a community of extreme adversity and need within Santa Rosa.
Formerly housed in a dilapidated window-less warehouse, the Charter School District received state funding and a matching grant to create a new school. As the funds to construct the school were quite modest, the design team was tasked with creating an extremely cost-effective design that met numerous requirements, as well as retaining the spirit of the school.
Long-time partners and sharing the same vision of education and innovation in the academic environment, Collège Sainte-Anne and Taktik design are once again teaming up to rethink the entire layout of the College’s main floor. The project’s challenge: create an innovative and dynamic place that encourages spontaneous encounters while also integrating the history of the institution founded in 1861 by the Sainte-Anne Sisters in Lachine.