Ewha Univeristy’s Campus Center / Dominique Perrault

This past April, Dominique Perrault completed the campus center for Ewha University in Seoul, Korea.  The new ‘campus valley’ provides both Ewhaians and prospective female students with much-needed space for continuing education and student services.

Further project description after the break.

The center, which began with a design competition in 2004, includes standard programmatic elements such as classrooms, administrative offices, libraries and a cafeteria.  The 20,000 square meter project also includes a unique commercial space, featuring a theater and retail stores.

As is customary of Perrault’s work, the campus center’s spaces are interspersed above and below the land, allowing the structure to explore the mingling of constructed material with earth.  The campus center manages to fit into its contained site by submerging much of the spaces underground.  Light penetrates the structure through a large channel that sits between the building’s two halves.

The campus center is designed to offer a new sense of direction for higher education in the 21st century.  It will establish organic relations between the building and surrounding areas of campus as well as between above ground and below ground spaces.

As seen on designboom.