BIG Breaks Ground on Faroe Islands Education Centre

© BIG

Situated on a hillside in the outskirts of , the capital of the autonomous Denmark province of , the new Marknagil Education Center will seek to “establish synergies” between three educational institutions under one roof. The BIG-designed, 19,200 square meter will provide for more than 1,200 students and 300 teachers by housing the Faroe Islands Gymnasium, Torshavns Technical College and Business College of Faroe Islands in a single building, making it the largest educational building in the country’s history.

More images and the architect’s description after the break…

SUPSI Campus Project / Kengo Kuma and Associates

Courtesy of Kengo Kuma and Associates

Kengo Kuma has paired up with Studio d`Architettura Martino Pedrozzi to develop a two-phase addition to La Scuola Universitaria Professionale della Svizzera Italiana (SUPSI), an institute of higher-education in applied science located in the Italian-speaking region of . The proposal intends to overcome an existing urban barrier of an expansive railway system to link the university to the city of Mendrisio, utilizing a “skywalk” as well as a large underpass. Because accessibility and movement are at the core of the building’s design, the new addition is a fusion of infrastructure as well as artificial landscape.

More on the SUPSI after the break.

AD Classics: Indian Institute of Management / Louis Kahn

© Dave Morris

While Louis Kahn was designing the National Assembly Building in Bangladesh in 1962, he was approached by an admiring Indian architect, Balkrishna Doshi, to design the 60 acre campus for the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, .  Much like his project in Bangladesh, he was faced with a culture enamored in tradition, as well as an arid desert climate.  For Kahn, the design of the institute was more than just efficient spatial planning of the classrooms; he began to question the design of the infrastructure where the classroom was just the first phase of learning for the students.