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“University campus” design briefs have always been the privileged experimental domain of large architectural firms. Looking back through history to the present day, three architectural projects stand out: the MIT campus, with buildings by Álvar Aalto, Eero Saarinen, and Frank Gehry; Milan’s Bocconi University, with the building designed by Grafton Architects, and SANAA’s recent intervention; and the Kanagawa Institute of Technology in Tokyo, with designs by Junya Ishigami. But what about campus designs today? What are the distinctive features of projects that, although called upon to ensure continuity with the past, must also comply with new regulatory requirements never imposed on their historical counterparts? Three possible design approaches have taken shape. The first is figurative continuity: mimetic, copycat versions of the original buildings. The second – its complete opposite – is the technique of estrangement, or semantic dislocation: designing and inserting a new work that deliberately overturns the original context’s function or language. The third approach is a focus on urban rather than figurative continuity: no longer a self-referential concentration on the object to be built, rather concern for the compositional features of the city, its interstitial spaces, axes, and hierarchies, a concern that gives rise to squares, circulation routes, and access points being more closely defined. It is precisely this last approach I would like to focus on, taking as an example the Wharton School of Business project, a complex of buildings inserted into the dense urban fabric of the University of Pennsylvania campus, and in particular, the Academic Research Building. Designed by Philadelphia-based MGA Partners, the building’s trapezoidal shape was determined by its position at the intersection of two main circulation routes on campus. Both an addition and an infill, it reflects the orthogonal and diagonal...
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Architecture as a Narrative
Germane Barnes
In the editorial, “Architecture as Narrative,” Germane Barnes explains how architecture is both an anthropological and narrative practice...
A one-on-one with Eduardo Souto de Moura
Eduardo Souto de Moura
In the Master column, Yehuda E. Safran talks about his meeting with Eduardo Souto de Moura...
LUMCON’s “Blue Works” Houma Campus
EskewDumezRipple
The Master Highlights column looks at EskewDumezRipple’s design of the Blue Works Campus for LUMCON...
