FIDM San Diego, San Diego, United States

Clive Wilkinson Architects completes new campus for FIDM

The latest installment of FIDM’s unique creative learning environments, the San Diego Campus, is a dynamic 'learning landscape'. Together with sister campuses in Orange County, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, the new architecture has come to represent the college’s reputation, brand, and philosophy towards education.

A variegated internal landscape is organised around the complex programmatic requirements of a school campus, all the while framing remarkable views of San Diego’s skyline and an adjacent park. FIDM’s new learning landscape is organised in three parts: a public entry zone, an educational zone and a zone for student support services and administration. A continuous path connects the different areas of the campus, taking one through specific areas such as reception, admissions, career guidance, financial services, classrooms, labs, student lounge and the library, each with its own unique spatial experience.

The warm palette of oranges, yellows and greens seen in the in the local desert vegetation compliment the rich blues of the clear desert sky. These saturated colours differentiate the 'monuments' in the landscape from the warm muted background characterised by the large oak-paneled ceiling and sand coloured quartz flooring in the public zone. The full-height wall graphics of abstracted vegetation lend visual texture to the space. Providing an environment for student socialisation, the Student Lounge offers a location for informal meeting to occur under a canopy of organic metal lanterns.

Creative Media Centre - City University of Hong Kong

Leigh & Orange and Studio Daniel Libeskind complete futuristic new Media Centre in Hong Kong

The Creative Media Centre for the City University of Hong Kong provides facilities that make the University to the first in Asia to offer the highest level of education and training in the creative media fields. The Centre will house the Centre for Media Technology and the Department of Computer Engineering and Information Technology. The distinctive crystalline design creates an extraordinary range of spaces rich in form, light, and material that, together, create an inspiring environment for research and creativity.

Studio Daniel Libeskind worked with Leigh & Orange Limited to complete the project on November 15th 2010. The project brief for the Creative Media Centre expressed two distinct requirements. First that there are very few repetitive rooms in the building and most rooms needed specific technological requirements that determine size, proportion, lighting, sound isolation and even structure and mechanical systems. In addition, there were requirements for space efficiency and cost that matched any other public academic building in Hong Kong.

The brief also required that the design of the CMC encourage creativity, collaboration and be a bold and provocative environment for the natural chaos inherent in creative endeavour. The architects balanced these two requirements through the connective public spaces on the interior and exterior that flow around the private, technical academic rooms. A line of cores runs through the center of the building. One-way beams span to the perimeter and create a 3m planning module for the rooms. Open area for circulation follows the line of cores but becomes an important space for creative collaboration through specific sculptural treatments. The sloping walls of the building create larger public spaces on the lower floors and open exterior areas on the ground.

Finally, within the private academic areas, the architects developed teaching clusters that reflect the same balance of openness and efficiency as the building as a whole. Each cluster has rooms for experimentation in their centre, offices and studios around the perimeter and flexible space for cooperation in between. These areas are asymmetrical and typically too wide for a corridor yet narrower than rooms, they are thus distinct areas specifically designed for unpredictable collaboration between teachers and students - between production and theory. The distinctive crystalline design creates an extraordinary range of spaces rich in form, light, and material that, together, create an inspiring environment for research and creativity.

Arts and Innovation Centre, Bangor University, United Kingdom - From the dragon's den..

Work on unifying Arts and Innovation Centre at Bangor University begins onsite

Due to open in spring 2013, the Arts and Innovation Centre at Bangor University - also known as the Pontio project - has been designed by global architecture firm Grimshaw to showcase local and international artistic talents using state-of-the-art digital technology.Construction has now commenced on the project, which was recently afforded financial backing of £27.5m from the EU's Convergence European Regional Development Fund through the Welsh Assembly Government.

The scheme also includes the erection of an 'Innovation Hub', designed to generate strong professional relationships between the educational institution and local businesses. The new design structure will straddle an area between the lower and elevated parts of Bangor city centre, unifying the two main campus areas of upper and lower Bangor.

Over a construction period of two years, Bangor University is hoping to incorporate a 500+ seat theatre, a rehearsal studio, teaching rooms, a cinema and an outdoor amphitheatre, alongside social spaces such as a new Student Union, bars, cafes and restaurants.

Waste-to-Energy Plant, Copenhagen, Denmark - Waste not, want not...

State of the art Waste-to-Energy Plant incorporates public rooftop ski slope

Beating strong contesters Wilkinson Eyre Architects, Dominique Perrault Architecture, 3xN, Lundgaard & Tranberg Architects and Gottlieb Paludan Architects to the punch, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) has been selected by a unanimous jury panel as the winner of an international competition to replace the 40 year old industrial Amagerforbraending plant in Copenhagen.

The Waste-to-Energy plant has been deemed an ‘exemplary model in the field of waste management and energy production’, spanning 95,000 sq m and boasting the latest technologies in waste treatment and environmental performance. BIG has encouraged an active relationship between the new plant and the public by exploiting vacant roof space as a 31,000 sq m ski slope.

Director of Amagerforbraending, Ulla Röttger, explains: “BIG’s proposal contributes to the city with something useful and beautiful. We see this creating a lot of opportunities and with this unique building we can brand the Danish knowledge and technology to show the world our abilities within the environment and energy issues.”

Visitors to the facility access the rooftop slopes via a lift along the plant’s smokestack which allows a glimpse into the internal activities of the plant. Traditionally viewed as a symbol of the industrial era, the smokestack has been transformed into an educational tool; every time one tonne of fossil CO2 is released, the smokestack discharges a 30m smoke ring into the air ‘as a gentle reminder of the impact of consumption and a measuring stick that will allow the common Copenhagener to grasp the CO2 emission in a straightforward way’. When darkness falls, heat tracking lights continue to illuminate these smoke rings.

Externally the complex is wrapped in a 74,000 sq m vertical green facade formed by planter modules stacked like bricks. Partner at BIG, David Zahle, explains: “Designing a façade for a building is like wrapping a gift without having to consider its content. Instead of concentrating on the wrapping paper we have instead invested our energy on creating a gift for the citizens of Copenhagen and its visitors no matter if they are adults or children, professionals or beginners. I can’t wait to ski on a base of clean and green energy with a view over the city in 2016.

”BIG is working with realities:united, AKT, and Topotek 1 & Man Made Land on the design for the new Waste-to-Energy Plant.

Lecor, Kungalv, Sweden - A steely reserve

Local design firm KKA have composed a new headquarters for steel manufacturer Lecor in Kungalv, 10km north of Gothenburg, Sweden. With the client's advanced project portfolio in the steel industry, it was imperative for the architecture of their commercial property to reflect their skill in this field.

The designers explain: "We have worked with materials, colours and textures in various ways that can be associated with the steel industry and its traditions. The colours remain mostly in a soft pastel scale and white shades as we have followed the principle to 'drape' the whole room in one and the same colour." Clad in dark grey steel plates, the angular design comprises offices, dining areas, meeting rooms, a library and changing rooms.

Soft pastel shades of pink, yellow and green punctuate the monochrome cladding, with particular sections such as the 'matkuben' (dining cube) protruding from the core of the building in the form of glass cubes sealed in a steel frame. On the top floor of the building, a conference room and outdoor terrace are enclosed in a long bridge of the truss plant-steel construction, from which users are afforded a 270 degree view over the surrounding wooded landscape.

Within the generous entrance hall is located a large staircase, framed by high, painted steel walls decorated in a specific pattern resembling the white glow from welding. The entrance flooring is composed of black ceramic tiles in three differing sizes, extending outside in a welcoming gesture to visitors and employees alike.

University of Florida Clinical Translational Research Building, Gainesville, United States

Perkins + Will designs facility to prolong the built environment and human life

The University of Florida Clinical Translational Research Building (CTRB) serves as the major catalyst for developing models and synergies in medical research, education, and healthcare across all colleges and departments at the University. The CTRB will extend clinical treatment from bench to bedside to curbside by outreach to the local community, creating a unique clinical research environment. The building creates a unified home for the NIH funded Institute on Aging (IOA) and the Clinical Translational Science Institute (CTSI) which are joined within a 120,000-sq-ft facility that is one of the first of its kind.

Inspired by the Biophilia Hypothesis the project emerges as a leaf drawn in the canvas of the site organising the project footprint into vein-like channels which filter and transmit stormwater to an on-site retention basin. The leaf’s central spine unites the IOA and CTSI by creating a collaborative courtyard. The two institutes each consist of a wing of clinical and support spaces at the ground level with research spaces above. The wings are joined by shared multi-purpose spaces, conference rooms, collaborative spaces and the main entry lobby.

The concept 'sustaining life itself provides healing' emerged from the desire to provide sustainable healing, working and educational environments. The concept; considering nature as both model and context provides the framework for the building design and sustainable strategies. The building utilises the environmental forces on the site to provide for its needs. Available solar radiation provides daylighting and energy through photovoltaic collectors. Rainwater and condensate will be collected for flushing toilets and irrigation. The building will achieve energy use reduction of up to 50% by its orientation, glazing design and through the use of underfloor displacement ventilation in the office and research areas. The project has a LEED® certification goal of Platinum and will be carbon-neutral.

Marco Polo Tower, Hamburg, Germany - Maiden voyage

Behnisch Architekten completes new residential tower named after Venetian merchant

Directly on the Elbe, commanding a prominent position in Hamburg's Hafen City, stands the 55-metre-high Marco Polo Tower. It punctuates the end of the route from the inner city out to the new attractions, the Cruise Ship Terminal and the Promenade on Strandkai.

The tower's 17 above-ground levels, each turned a few degrees on their axis, allow all 58 apartments spectacular views over the harbour and the city. Apartments are between 60 and 340 sq m in area. Generous perimeter terraces and balconies extend the living areas out into a soft play of lines, and lend the tower its distinctive sculptural image. External variations in appearance are reflected in the interiors, in that no level, or apartment, is quite like any other. Load-bearing structural elements and necessary fixed services have all been reduced as much as possible, so that the residents themselves can decide where they want to sleep, cook, eat, bathe or relax. On entering the apartment one has an uninterrupted view over an open plan living room landscape, through generously sized glass panels, to the outside world and Hamburg's roofscape.

The apartments are sold design-ready. Clients can design their new home, with the help of an interior architect, according to their own taste. The concept for residential spaces proposed by the Behnisch Architekten emphasises natural light and views. The Marco Polo Tower brings together high-class living accommodation and a holistic ecological building concept. The recessed façades are protected from direct sun by the overhanging terraces above so that additional sunshades are not necessary. Vacuum collectors on the roof, using a heat exchanger, turn heat into a cooling system for the apartments. Innovative sound insulated air louvres in the sleeping areas make natural ventilation possible without increased noise pollution from outside.