The expansion of the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto speaks to its context in a variety of scales-- activating the site from the outside in, as well as inside out. A new cladding will be built around the existing structure, giving the building a unified image that articulates a larger idea about the site through the way it engages its surroundings, while also improving the building’s environmental performance.

The design proposes a public promenade from the urban context, through the core of the building, all the way to the terrace rooftop. By creating visual, accessible, and programmatic links between the various disciplines, the building’s interior is transformed as a place of learning, while its altered massing reconfigures the city’s skyline.

The existing building of the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design anchors the southwest corner of University of Toronto, but does not engage the urban context, thus posing great potentials for the redefinition of the threshold into the campus. In the new design, the southwest, southeast, and northwest corners of the building take on a new urban significance by engaging new entry sequences.

Built on the campus of EPFL Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, The Rolex Learning Center, designed by the Japanese architectural practice SANAA, will open February 22, 2010.

The Rolex Learning Center will function as a laboratory for learning, a library with 500,000 volumes and an international cultural hub for EPFL, open to both students and the public. Spread over one single fluid space of 215,278 square feet, it provides a seamless network of services, libraries, information gathering, social spaces, spaces to study, restaurants, cafes and beautiful outdoor spaces. It is a highly innovative building, with gentle slopes and terraces, undulating around a series of internal ‘patios’, with almost invisible supports for its complex curving roof, which required completely new methods of construction.

Teaching and entrepreneur start-up office facilities side by side – that's the philosophy behind the distinctive extension to the existing 1970’s structure of the University College Vitus Bering Denmark in Horsens.

The new Innovation building is designed to sit on a brick base, in a direct continuation of the existing complex’ architecture, but from there on it bears a distinct different and unique.

The building's dynamic character is expressed via its spiral shape. On the facades, the movement is seen in the glazing strips that stretch towards the sky across the six storeys of the building and create the impression of a spiral sequence, while internally it is expressed via the main staircase in green fibre cement, which runs in a spiral form between the storeys in the unifying internal atrium. The inclined forms of the building also have the practical advantage of allowing a necessary fire escape route to be cut through the building.

Photographs by Julian Weyer

Steven Holl Architects in collaboration with BNIM Architects, has won the commission for the new art studio facility for the University of Iowa (UI) Arts campus.
The new building is to replace an original arts building from 1936, which was heavily damaged during a flood of the University of Iowa campus in June 2008. The proposed site is directly adjacent to and northwest of the Art Building West, designed by Steven Holl Architects, which since its opening in 2006 has received numerous awards, including the AIA 2007 Institute Honor Award for Architecture.

The Cooper Union’ s new building at 41 Cooper Square in New York City, is an academic facility located on the east side of Third Avenue between 6th and 7th Streets. It houses the college’s Albert Nerken School of Engineering and Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences along with additional facilities for the School of Art and the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture.

Thom Mayne and the Morphosis team designed the nine-story, 175,000 square foot, full-block building to replace more than 40 percent of the academic space at the college with reconfigurable, state-of-the-art classrooms, laboratories, studios and public spaces.

As explained by Thom Mayne, the new academic building for The Cooper Union, aspires to manifest the character, culture and vibrancy of both the 150 year-old institution and of the city in which it was founded.

All photographs © Iwan Baan

Europan invites young architects, urban planners, landscape architects, designers, artists, researchers and students from all over Europe to take part in the great European discourse on urbanism and architecture. Back in January 2009, Europan launched its 10th edition seeking proposals with innovative ideas, developing ambitious urban projects within 62 cities. There was 56 winners among 2,429 entries. We are focusing this post on the winning proposition for an urban development in the city of Oslo by Eriksen Skajaa Architects.

All images by Eriksen Skajaa Architects