The North West Cambridge Development (NWCD) transforms a 150-hectare site of University of Cambridge farmland into a community with residential buildings, academic facilities, public amenities and open green space. Mecanoo worked alongside NWCD to deliver 232 affordable housing units for researchers and key university employees.
The Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University is a state-of-the-art facility dedicated to the advancement of transdisciplinary collaboration between the arts, sciences, and humanities. The two-story, 52,465 square-foot building is designed to create dynamic relationships between the diverse instructional, production, and exhibition spaces. The first floor includes a 150-seat Studio Theater, the Skylight Gallery, Central Gallery, Entry Gallery, and two Media Arts Galleries. Interdisciplinary maker labs including a wood shop, metal shop, paint booth, rapid prototyping areas, and a student classroom are dispersed on the ground floor. On the building’s primary facade is a large projection wall that brings the art outside. The second floor features a breakout study area, three classrooms, a large studio, an artist’s studio, a technology lending library, audiovisual editing booths, and a café that bridges the public spaces of the ground level.
Mount Royal University’s Taylor Centre for the Performing Arts is a welcoming and dynamic environment for both music performance and education. In use by the Mount Royal Conservatory, established in Calgary in 1910, the facility was designed to provide music education for the entire university and community at large, including students from age 3 to adulthood, and also to express connection to place and the direct correlation between the learning and performance of music. The design expresses the unique geography and history of Calgary, located at the heart of Alberta, where the western prairies meet the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The area’s iconic imagery includes the lone barn on the vast open prairie landscape; the teepees of the region’s aboriginal inhabitants the Scarce and the Stony peoples; and the Alberta rose, which blooms wild and is the province’s official floral emblem. These elements inspired and informed the design process, beginning with the structure and form-making to the deliberate lighting, colors and finish material selections.
The project is a cafeteria and co-working space which is designed for Middle East Technical University within the large campus area in Ankara, Turkey. The purpose is to create a high-quality platform for the possibility of interaction, collective and collaborative working amongst the students and academicians. Given that the site location of the project is in close proximity to the research development areas of the university, the building is imagined to become an incubator and support the activities of researchers. By working for 24 hours, the co-working space offers a different ground for the campus rather than another institution. The primary design issues stem from the wish to integrate nature into architecture through passive and active systems and variety of architectural elements.
This multifunctional studio theatre with production and support spaces provides Boston University’s internationally acclaimed School of Theatre with a 21st-century learning environment for collaboration and experimentation. Collocated on BU’s Charles River Campus with the rest of the College of Fine Arts for the first time in decades, the theatre creates a new era of engagement for the University community, the Town of Brookline, and area residents. With its dramatically reflective façade framed by a delicate concrete scrim, the 75,000-square-foot theatre complex delights and instructs, giving architectural form to Hamlet’s injunction to the players “to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature.”
Tags: Boston, Massachusetts Comments Off on Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre and the College of Fine Arts Production Center in Boston, Massachusetts by Elkus Manfredi Architects
In response to increased enrollment and a desire to foster a close-knit community, Ringling College of Art and Design wanted to add on-campus housing capacity. After completing Ringling’s campus master plan, Ayers Saint Gross designed a contemporary residence hall with apartment-style units for upperclass students. Siting was crucial to its success, and the result is a beautiful and functional connection between the urban edge of campus and the adjacent Whitaker Bayou. The location links the new residence hall to the rest of campus via an arts walk, a key element of the master plan. The project introduces new urbanism principles to campus with a well-defined street edge and activates a previously underutilized area.
Naturalis is the national research institute for biodiversity dating from 1820 which was founded by King Willem I in Leiden, The Netherlands. The institute with a long and rich history experienced an exponential growth in the last decade which led to an urgent necessity to renovate. The number of visitors increased rapidly to 400.000 per year. The new future proof Naturalis brings the growing collection of 42 million objects together (top five in the world). Its new state of the art facilities accommodate more than two hundred researchers whose studies are at the center of attention, contributing solutions to global issues including climate change, the decline of biodiversity on earth, food supply and water quality. The Naturalis facilities and the collection enable to contribute solutions at the highest level. At the same time the new museum offers the chance to show the public the wealth and beauty of nature.
Architectural Designteam: Michiel Riedijk, Willem Jan Neutelings, Frank Beelen, Kenny Tang, Guillem Colomer Fontanet, Jolien Van Bever, Inés Escauriaza Otazua, Marie Brabcová, Cynthia Deckers
Building a city on a city” has long been the standard approach to urban renewal. Our modernityhas largely ignored and further complicated this practice that is now coming back all the more strongly due to the economic realities of construction being challenged by the severity of environmental issues.
Rehabilitating and preserving existing buildings, even over and above considerations of heritage, is becoming a viable means of saving energy and sobriety, a source of reusable materials and a great opportunity to discover new uses resulting from conversion. Entering a building with its past life and its history, its previous uses, means imagining new stories to tell based on older tales and the richness of their promise.
That is why we like to use the term “Metamorphosis” rather than rehabilitation: for us, it means building on the old to create something new and richer still than what might have been preserved.
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHK SZ) brings the global perspective and academic excellence to the city Shenzhen – China’s rapidly-growing innovation and tech hub. Situated in the natural reserve area of Tong Gu Hill, the campus houses multiple teaching and research facilities, student residences, administrative offices, and recreation facilities that serve 7000 students. Rocco Design Architects Associates developed a masterplan and comprehensive design that not only serves the needs of faculty, students, and staff, but also creates a sustainable, community-oriented learning environment that reflects the dynamic and collaborative spirit of Shenzhen.
Client: Bureau of Public Works of Shenzhen Municipality / The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Design Team: Rocco Yim, Derrick Tsang, William Tam, Peter Tso, William Lee, Joseph Kong, Karen Wong, Li Qingyue, Elisa Angeletti, Alan Chiang, Gilles Chan, Luo Quan, Cai Jing Hua, Zhou Zhi Min, Deng Liwei, Felix Chow, Clara Wu, Kevin Huang, Rachel Sit.
Local Design Institute: China Northeast Architectural Design and Research Institute
Collaborators: Wang Weijen Architecture, Gravity Partnership Ltd.
University of South Australia was founded in its current form in 1991 with the merger of the South Australian Institute of Technology and the South Australian College of Advanced Education. By transforming the on-campus student experience and enabling access for the surrounding community, Pridham Hall has become a civic landmark for both the university and the city.
This new addition to Adelaide’s west end highlights the importance of public spaces that engage and inspire connectivity between students, learning and the wider Adelaide community. Pridham Hall delivers a new comprehensive sporting hub to the university’s City West campus to encourage students’ well-being and physical health, while simultaneously providing an on-campus venue for graduations, events and student interaction.
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