Archinect - News

CannonDesign completes new Western Michigan University student center inspired by Indigenous design elements

2024-03-04T12:13:00-05:00

CannonDesign has completed a new student center at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. Replacing the university’s Bernhard Center, the new three-level building contains gathering and lounge spaces, dining, a bookstore, a future on-campus brewpub, and retail, designed as a “beacon of inclusion,” according to the team.

Photo credit: Christopher Barrett

“Located on lands historically occupied by Ojibwe, Odawa, and Bodewadmi nations, the building is designed to be a student-centered gathering place that champions belonging and honors the roots of Native American heritage embedded throughout the site,” the team notes.

Photo credit: Laura Peters

The building’s 163,000-square-foot plan was designed to create “interstitial opportunities” for students to informally engage with each other. Student feedback influenced the design of various social elements, such as a sitting circle derived from Native American culture. Across the sc...

SOM completes Rice University’s new engineering and science building behind a patterned brick facade

2023-12-08T13:24:00-05:00

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) has completed a new engineering and science building for Rice University in Houston, Texas. Named the Ralph S. O’Connor Building for Engineering and Science, the 250,000-square-foot facility seeks to “provide students and researchers with technology-rich facilities that align with the University’s goal to stay at the forefront of scientific discovery.”

Image credit: Dave Burk © SOM

The new building contains laboratories, classrooms, offices, a cafe, and gathering spaces. At the top level, meanwhile, a multi-purpose event space contains an outdoor terrace set against the backdrop of the Houston skyline.

The building is anchored by a five-story central atrium, imagined by the team as “a hub of activity” connecting the wider facilities. A glazed facade at the ground level visually connects the building with the Engineering Quad outside, while a cantilevered sculptural stair is framed by brick walls and a fritted glass wall on the upper levels.

Image cred...

U.S. colleges eye unused office buildings for academic adaptive reuse

2023-10-06T14:09:00-04:00

U.S. colleges are taking advantage of a post-pandemic increase in affordable, unused offices by purchasing such properties for educational use, according to reporting by The New York Times. Since 2018, numerous higher education institutions in the U.S. have been acquiring office buildings, with 49 private and 16 public institutions making such purchases, as per data from real estate services company JLL.

“For schools seeking to expand, or just beef up their real estate portfolios, the purchases can be a bonanza,” The Times explains. “With the office market in a slump, they have bought buildings at bargain prices. Renovations are usually needed, but a makeover is typically not as expensive or as time-consuming as building from scratch."

Related on Archinect: AIA announces $20 billion in grant funding made available for adaptive reuse and decarbonization projects. Image credit: Brian Ferry

Examples cited by The Times include the 1928 Title and Trust Building in Los Angeles purchased b...

DIALOG and Smoke Architecture complete Ontario college building inspired by Indigenous principles

2023-09-21T11:36:00-04:00

Toronto-based DIALOG has completed the A-Building Expansion at Centennial College in Scarborough, Ontario. Designed in collaboration with Smoke Architecture, and described by the team as “Canada’s first LEED Gold, zero carbon, WELL certified, mass timber, higher-education facility,” the newly completed scheme “seamlessly blends Indigenous perspectives, sustainability and innovative architecture.”

Image credit: James Brittain courtesy of DIALOG

The project provides 133,000 square feet of new construction in addition to 16,000 square feet of existing renovations. Paying homage to Indigenous traditions and nature-inspired sustainability, the scheme is rooted in the Mi’kmaq concept of “Two-Eyed Seeing,” which “harmonizes Indigenous wisdom and Western perspectives.”

Image credit: James Brittain courtesy of DIALOG

Inspired by how the traditional Anishinaabe Wigwams were designed with their skin pulled up in the summer for air circulation, the team incorporated that same concept for the bui...

A new Kharkiv School of Architecture student project delivers valuable design solutions for rebuilding schools in Ukraine

2023-09-06T18:43:00-04:00

A new project aimed at improving the educational experience of Ukrainian schoolchildren is helping students at the Kharkiv School of Architecture participate in their country’s concerted response to an infrastructure crisis that began in February 2022 and has seen the destruction of an estimated 331 educational institutions nationwide, thus far.

The "First-Aid Spatial Kit" initiative is being taught as part of the school’s first-year construction practice curriculum and allows students to develop copyable designs for various interventions (furniture, pavilions, play spaces, etc.), which, in turn, can be implemented using readily-available materials by affected school districts looking for “self-help” solutions in rebuilding.

Photo: Zlatoslava Kryshtafovych & Oleksandr Holovashkin, courtesy Kharkiv School of Architecture

Over the course of four weeks, students developed a suite of six solutions that were also marked by a consideration for accessibility and universal design. Each of t...

New Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance building is completed behind a playful stone facade

2023-06-01T11:43:00-04:00

Construction has been completed on the new Ari Kushner Building at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. Designed by Tel Aviv-based HQ Architects and New York's HWKN Architecture, the scheme is housed in what the team calls an “elegant, playful, stone facade” to bring a “sense of unity and a contemporary, welcoming identity” to the academy’s campus.

Image credit: Dor Kedmi

The 27,000-square-foot cultural building houses new choreography, jazz studios, vocal and opera studios as well as a 115-seat music recital hall, equipping the campus with a central performance venue that it previously lacked. Externally, the development is defined by a “curiosity-generating” facade that extends in front of both the existing building and the new addition, constructed of unfinished Jerusalem stone blocks turned 45 degrees on their side.

Image credit: Dor Kedmi

“It balances the geometric order, natural materiality, and intentional imperfection all in a...

Five campus projects by sustainability champions Studio Ma: Your Next Employer?

2023-03-27T14:01:00-04:00

Following last week’s visit to Los Angeles-based Relativity Architects, we are moving our Meet Your Next Employer series to Phoenix, Arizona this week where we meet Studio Ma.

Founded by Christiana Moss, Christopher Alt, and Dan Hoffman in 2003, the studio has developed a portfolio driven by principles of bioclimatic regenerative design, social equity, and public engagement. The firm’s attention to bioclimatic design has previously been seen in our editorial through their sustainable townhouse complex in Arizona and their receipt of a 2021 AIA Small Project Award for their Xero Studio.

Over on Archinect Jobs, the firm is currently hiring for several positions across their Phoenix office. For candidates interested in applying for a position, or anybody interested in learning more about the studio’s work, we have rounded up five educational campus projects by Studio Ma that demonstrate their design ethos.

Princeton University Lakeside Graduate Housing

Opened in 2015, the Lakeside Grad...

University of Kansas appoints BIG to reimagine its school of architecture

2023-03-10T10:44:00-05:00

The University of Kansas’ School of Architecture and Design has appointed Bjarke Ingels Group to design a new multidisciplinary design school. BIG’s commission, which includes space planning, programming, and concept design, seeks to establish a “redesigned home for the school that respects the established character of the site while also being optimized for innovative teaching and research.”

The school’s expansion follows a decade of increasing enrolment numbers and an expanded program offering. While details of BIG’s proposal have not yet been announced, the school suggests that BIG’s plan will involve an engagement with the school’s existing facilities on Jayhawk Boulevard.

"For an architect, each project is kicked off with a crash course seeking to educate ourselves in an entirely new field, because we rarely design for other ar...

Heatherwick Studio’s first ever school features cascading terraces in Tokyo

2023-02-28T11:25:00-05:00

Heatherwick Studio has revealed the design for the first school project in the practice’s history. Situated in Tokyo, The British School seeks to be the largest international school in the city when it opens in August 2023.

The 16,000-square-foot scheme is spread across eight levels and features several landscaped outdoor learning and recreational spaces including on upper floors. The design team imagine the cascading outdoor spaces as social areas where teachers can work with the school’s 800 pupils, with planted balconies to be cared for by students.

Image credit: Heatherwick Studio

“Most inner-city schools don’t have enough playground space and the site was quite restricted,” explained Heatherwick Studio partner Neil Hubbard in a statement. “So we wedged playgrounds between each of the classrooms, creating outdoor learning spaces where pupils can explore and interact with each other and their teachers much more freely than in traditional school environments.”

“[The project’s] bric...

Perkins&Will begins construction on mass timber gateway to University of British Columbia campus

2023-01-04T11:15:00-05:00

Construction is underway on the $180 million Gateway Building at the University of British Columbia, designed by Perkins&Will and Schmidt Hammer Lassen. Intended as a “principal point of entry” to the UBC campus, the design of the six-story, 267,000-square-foot mass timber building seeks to balance sustainability, personal well-being, and Indigenous collaboration.

Image credit: Perkins&Will

The scheme comprises two five-story wings connected by a central naturally-lit six-story atrium, which includes a large interconnecting staircase and lounging spaces. The building’s mass timber structure is fully expressed in the interior; a decision driven by the importance of timber for the Indigenous Musqueam people on whose territory the UBC campus sits.

Image credit: Perkins&Will

“This was the first capital project where we did what we call ‘deep engagement’ with the Musqueam,” UBC’s director of planning and design Gerry McGeough told Canada’s Journal of Commerce. “We went through a whole seri...

See inside DS+R's newly-opened Prior Performing Arts Center at the College of the Holy Cross

2022-09-29T15:15:00-04:00

Diller Scofidio + Renfro has shared new photos of its just-opened Prior Performing Arts Center at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

The three-year, $110 million project culminated in an 84,000-square-foot multipurpose arts facility that houses a 400-seat proscenium theater, 200-seat studio space, and the relocated Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery, which has garnered a reputation as one of the leading academic art museums in the country since first being founded in 1983.

Photo: Iwan Baan courtesy of DS+R

“The new Prior Performing Arts Center is an uncommon commons,” DS+R partner-in-charge Charles Renfro describes the project. “The building is uniquely perched on a hill overlooking the campus and Worcester, yet straddles the intersection of multiple cross-campus paths. While its world-class facilities provide a singular new home for Holy Cross's performing arts students, its atrium invites the broader student body to participate in casual and unscripted cr...

New Compton High School, featuring a Dr. Dre-sponsored performing arts center, officially breaks ground

2022-05-10T14:57:00-04:00

Construction has officially commenced on the new DLR Group-designed Compton High School in California. Designers, dignitaries, school district leaders, staff, students, and community members came together on May 7th to celebrate the groundbreaking.

The 126-year-old school has a rich history, well known for producing music and athletic prodigies. DLR Group’s design celebrates this legacy through a new campus with a dynamic learning environment that aims to elevate education for both students and educators. The design solution is centered around learning suites that foster project-based learning, student exploration, general instruction, and relationship building. In addition, the learning suites will allow for interdepartmental collaboration. They are designed as separate suites that can be linked together with moveable walls that open and close, allowing students and faculty to customize their spaces to support a variety of learning activities.

“This school represents yet another si...

Pritzker Prize winner Diébédo Francis Kéré on why his childhood is keeping him motivated

2022-03-22T18:01:00-04:00

I never saw myself connected to this big thing. I was just using my skills to create comfortable spaces and beautiful schools and housing for my people. No, I never dreamed to see this work connected with Pritzker. No, no, never.

NPR’s Michel Martin got the newest Pritzker laureate and recently-named Dakar Goethe Institute designer to harken back to his childhood village in Burkina Faso, which he credited as a strong influence beginning with his educational experiences in darkened classrooms that frequently hovered around 100 degrees.

Recently on Archinect: Francis Kéré named 2022 Pritzker Prize winner

“Being in the village, you're thinking about big buildings, glass and whatever, far away,” Kéré told NPR. “And so in Burkina, that is it. The focus is the Western. But in my case, it's like you just have, you know, a tradition, which is strong, which has skills, which has some great things that I relate to the environment, to the ecology […] but people don't see it [as if] it has a value. And when we started, it cost me a lot of energy to really convince [them]. But a couple of years ago, people started to see that what I'm doing was the good solution.”

Related on Archinect: Francis Kéré and others are attempt...

World's first 3D-printed school due to rise in Madagascar

2021-02-05T11:21:00-05:00

The world’s first 3D-printed school will soon rise on the African island nation of Madagascar. With a speedy construction timeline and a process that can be easily replicated, the school could become a new model for providing much-needed educational spaces in underresourced communities.

The project was designed by Studio Mortazavi, an architecture firm based in San Francisco and Lisbon, in collaboration with Thinking Huts, a nonprofit aiming to increase global access to education through 3D printing, reports Fast Company.

Moreover, according to Fast Company, architect Amir Mortazavi, outlining the benefits of 3D-printing when there is a shortage of local labor, said: "We can build these schools in less than a week, including the foundation and all the electrical and plumbing work that’s involved. Something like this would typically take months, if not even longer."

Toronto's new multi-use social nexus fosters recreation and education

2021-02-04T13:24:00-05:00

The new Canoe Landing Campus designed by ZAS Architects in Toronto introduces a social and educational offering that was missing in CityPlace, one of Toronto's most populated residential developments.

The new project houses a $65 million community recreation center, public and Catholic elementary schools, and a childcare center within one campus. "Canoe Landing Campus has been embraced as a place that builds a real sense of ‘neighborhood’ for this vertical community," says Peter Duckworth-Pilkington, Principal, ZAS Architects, in a statement "We started by listening to the residents and the result is a unique architectural response not previously seen in the city."

The schools on the site share indoor play spaces, a learning commons, gymnasium, and educational areas. The outdoor park and community rooms are also accessible to the public sector. Additionally, the two-story community center is bisected by a pedestrian corridor and connects the three-sto...

OPEN completes new library/theater hybrid building for an international school in Shanghai

2021-01-21T13:02:00-05:00

As part of its work on the Shanhai Qinpu Pinghe International School, OPEN Architecture has completed the Pinghe Bibliotheater, a library/theater hybrid building that invites students into a free-flowing space of both learning and performance.

Photos by Jonathan Leijonhufvud.

"When we were given the extensive and jumbled-together program of a new school for 2000 students aged from 3 to 18 years, the immediate reaction was how dreadful it would be for a kid spending these many years fixed in one building," said the architects in a statement. "We decided to break away from the current trend of school-as-megastructure. Instead, the original program was deconstructed and grouped into many smaller and distinctive buildings, forming a village-like campus."

Photo by Jonathan Leijonhufvud.

Photo by WU Qingshan.

The Bibliotheater is just one of the many structures that will make up the new school. The different programs interlock like a "Chinese puzzle," creating a singular massing that is con...