Educational: The Latest Architecture and News

Carlo Ratti Associati has released details of their schematic design for the University of Milan’s new science campus, featuring robotically-assembled brick facades, porous communal areas, and natural oases. Working in collaboration with Australian real estate group Lendlease, the “Science for Citizens” proposal will sit within a new Milan Innovation District, located on the site of Milan’s 2015 World Expo.

Located within this new district, and home to over 18,000 students and 2,000 researchers, the “Science for Citizens” proposal seeks to “put forward a vision for an open campus that becomes a testing ground for innovative education while fostering exchanges between the university and the surrounding innovation neighborhood.”

The beginning of the fall semester is quickly approaching, and prospective architecture students are gearing up for the beginning of their future careers. While the next step may seem daunting, the first year of your architecture education helps set the pace for the remaining four to five years. So it's important to get started on the right foot.

Architecture studios are notorious for long nights, intensive model-making and desks overflowing with trace paper and parti diagrams. But there is one important aspect of studio life that is too often neglected: the student-professor relationship.

Read on for the four steps to start investing in this unique relationship to set yourself up for success.

Within a week of its successor being awarded the Silver Lion at the 2016 Venice Biennale, the original Makoko Floating School collapsed. Designed by Nigerian architect Kunlé Adeyemi of NLÉ Architects, the school was located in the Lagos Lagoon in Nigeria. Now, almost two years later, Lagos-based writer Allyn Gaestel has investigated the vulnerable coastal community and architect behind the project in a remarkable narrative nonfiction piece, "Things Fall Apart."

The One Heart Foundation has announced the winners of the Children’s Eco-Village Design Competition. Attracting 45 submissions from 21 countries, the brief asked participants to propose an environmentally-friendly campus for orphaned and abandoned children, to be built in Soy, Kenya.

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London-based firm Architecture Initiative has released updates of their mixed-use scheme set to transform a neglected brutalist building in Northampton, England. The Northampton International Academy, currently an abandoned Royal Mail sorting office, will be centered around educational, commercial, and community use. The scheme aims to address a need for school places in a manner which contributes to the economic regeneration of the local area.

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Henley Halebrown has released updates for their proposed mixed-use scheme in Hackney, London. 333 Kingland Road, previously occupied by a fire station, will soon be home to the Hackney New Primary School, commercial units, and dual aspect apartments. The scheme aims to address a need for school places and homes in London and to maintain a connection between learning and living in a dense urban environment.

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The Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCAD U) has selected firms Morphosis Architects, Teeple Architects, and Two Row Architect to manage the design and execution of the university’s new Creative City Campus (CCC) expansion project.

The project aims to extend and reinvigorate the campus core along McCaul Street in downtown Toronto and will include approximately 55,000 square feet of new construction, in addition to the renovation of 95,000 square feet of existing campus space.

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“The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise / Were all at prayers inside the oratory / A ship appeared above them in the air. / The anchor dragged along behind so deep / It hooked itself into the altar rails.”[1]

These words by Irish poet Seamus Heaney have had a profound impact on the work of architects Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey, who cited the poem as one of their inspirations for the Glucksman Gallery – an exhibition space commissioned by the University of Cork in the early millennium. Named for its patron Lewis Glucksman (a Wall Street trader and philanthropist), the Glucksman Gallery was completed in 2005 and nominated for the Stirling Prize that same year. Thanks to its outstanding site-specific design, the building has since become one of the most celebrated works of contemporary Irish architecture.

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LYCS Architecture has released designs for Hangzhou NO.2 School of Future Sci-Tech City, a kindergarten, primary and secondary school complex in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. Encompassing 44,900 square meters, the design takes inspiration from a child’s drawing of his ideal school – a small town filled with child-scaled spaces and “happy” streets. The complex is broken up into 15 gabled volumes, which gradually increase in size and scale to accommodate the range of student ages.

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Michael Maltzan Architecture has released new images of their design for the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University in Houston, Texas, coinciding with the announcement that the building will open to the public on February 24, 2017. The building is conceived as a multi-disciplinary lab for creativity, which will contain “an experimental platform for creating and presenting works in all disciplines” as well as a flexible teaching space and a forum to host partnerships with visiting national and international artists.

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HENN has won a competition to design the new Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Building for the Technical University of Munich at the Garching research campus, which is Europe’s largest research campus. The design features four rectangular buildings encircling a central glass hall envisioned as a beacon and hub to promote interaction among students and academics.

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Perkins Eastman has released plans for a two-story expansion and redesign of the SOM-designed Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research at the University of Chicago campus in Chicago, Illinois. Construction on the 63,500 square foot building has just begun, and once completed, will serve as the renewed home of the University’s Department of Physics. The addition and renovation will create a new physics hub on campus that will allow students of different sub-disciplines to collaborate under the same roof for the first time.

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Woods Bagot has revealed designs for the new Biological Sciences building at the University of New South Wales (UNSW Australia). Currently under construction, the 21,000 square meter (226,000 square foot) building will provide world-class facilities for UNSW biomedical and environmental researchers and create a new northern gateway for the university’s upper campus.

In the design process, Woods Bagot explored a series of iterative responses aimed at dividing the eight-story structure into three distinct elements: the laboratory box, the workplace box, and the atrium. The building skin takes inspiration from natural elements, such as the movements of a butterfly and the colors of Australian rock landscapes, to produce a distinct aesthetic for the Biomedical Precinct, as well as reference the terra cotta heritage on the university grounds.

Ennead Architects has released images of the new Engineering Education and Research Center for the University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering. Currently under construction, the 433,000 square foot (40,200 square meter) building will house undergraduate education, interdisciplinary graduate research and two distinct engineering departments, and will become a new hub of activity at the edge of campus. The design takes advantage of a unique section featuring stacked atrium and outdoor spaces to serve a variety of educational and public functions.

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Founded by Harvard and MIT, edX offers more than 800 free, online courses as well as certificates from top universities around the world, including Harvard, MIT and UC Berkeley. The courses cover everything from literature to poetry, medicine, biology, urban planning, engineering, history and architecture.

Taught mostly in English, the courses have different weekly requirements, and generally require participants to be online at designated times of the day. There are also classes offered in other languages like Chinese, French, Spanish and Portuguese. They also offer certificates that can be purchased at the end of the course, costing between $50-$70.

A proposal by Miba Architects and Calderon‐Folch‐Sarsanedas Architects has received 2nd prize in an international competition to design the new medical school for the University of Cyprus. The project proposes a “campus within a campus,” combining the strict bio-climatic regulations of a research lab with a social space for learning. Read more after the break.

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