32 | SPECIAL REPORT: INTERIORS | CAMPUS SERVICES
A recent study by Which? would suggest so. In a
survey to determine what students look for when choosing a university, a massive 57% said that the quality of academic facilities was important. And it seems that their need for eye-catching surroundings in which to flourish isn’t lost on universities and colleges around the world – creative, cuting-edge and sometimes just downright wacky new facilities are being unveiled on an almost monthly basis. A group of canny third-year interior design students at the George Washington University in Washington DC have even got in on the act, seting up a business, ZOOM Interiors, specifically to transform prison cell- like dorm bedrooms into chic living spaces. One of the most impressive recent developments
HONG KONG POLYTECHNIC
is the Jockey Club Innovation Tower at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, designed by Pritzker Award- winning starchitect Zaha Hadid and opening in March 2014. The 15-storey structure will house the University's School of Design, and its interior is clearly intended to inspire a flexible approach to creativity. A photogenic clash of fragmented geometry and fluid curves, it is discordant yet somehow indefectible. Rising up through the building on one of its escalators, it's hard not to marvel at the sleek, space-age walkways, state-of-
the-art spotlighting and 360-degree views from every floor. The message is clear: if you study here, you're top of the crop. Architecture photographer Edmon Leong, one of the first people to be given a tour of the building, was suitably impressed. “You can see the design’s similarity to the Guangzhou Opera House but on a smaller scale,” he told Dezeen magazine. “The atriums look prety amazing. I wish I’d had a
space like this when I atended university.” Keeping up appearances as one of the world’s most
prestigious universities, Yale has also gone down the route of employing a renowned architect, in
is clear. As renowned author and architect Michael J Crosbie told The Hartford Courant newspaper, “Evans Hall is a very elegantly detailed, hip, innovative, coolly corporate facility that demonstrates Yale’s desire to be a player on the world’s stage of business schools.” Sir Norman was also drafted in to design the
Philological Library at the Free University of Berlin, opened to great acclaim in 2005. For this vast centre of knowledge, containing some 700,000 books across 11 separate mini-libraries, he devised a building in the shape of a human brain. But while this cranial edifice inspires whispers of admiration when viewed from the outside, it’s only when you venture in that you can fully admire its architectural majesty. A giant geodesic dome casts dappled paterns
of sunlight over four undulating, double-height mezzanine floors (there’s another underground), each of which contains a central core of books and a bank of reading desks running continuously around the perimeter. And ‘the Berlin Brain’ is as environmentally friendly as it is stunning: the dome’s opaque aluminium and transparent glazed panels correspond to the solar path, helping to regulate the internal temperature, while during the day the building is entirely naturally lit. The senior partner in charge of the project, David
Nelson, is satisfied the result will get the best out of bookish Berliners. “We realised that students would spend hundreds of hours in the library,” he told the Arch Daily website, “so we wanted to provide them with the perfect environment to study – one which is animated by natural light and air.” Another building to be illuminated by natural light
is New York University’s Department of Philosophy, whose weird and wonderful interior was executed by Steven Holl Architects in 2007. Entering through the building’s historic but unremarkable frontage, the first thing to strike you is the transformation into
"AS SOON AS YOU WALK IN, YOU ARE THRUST INTO A VIBRANT HUB OF ACTIVITY"
this case to conjure up a new building for its School of Management. British-born Sir Norman Foster – himself a Yale graduate and now the owner of Foster + Partners – spent six years designing and constructing the five-storey Edward P Evans Hall in New Haven, Connecticut, and the result is a sumptuous cathedral of study whose sense of light and space can’t fail to stimulate the senses. As soon as you walk in, you are thrust into a
vibrant hub of activity, thanks to an enormous, glass-clad central atrium that allows you to see what’s happening on all five levels at once. Within that, on the second and fourth floors, are 16 free-standing classrooms, double-height and clothed in high- gloss, dark-blue acrylic panels that exude a certain contemporary chic. But best of all is the ‘library’ on floors two and three: a bookless outlet of digital databases, this lustrous space is dominated by huge windows and features a remarkable, suspended reading room that hangs above it from steel straps. As with the Innovation Tower, the message of intent
LIBRARY, FREE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN
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