concept & vision
Instead of making terminal statements about the style of a time or the icon of a place, architecture school buildings should always be more like neutral but provocative scaffolding: armatures, tools, and frameworks that inspire and require constant transformation. An architecture school is not truly designed only once by an architect for a competition, but over again and again by its users: remade every season by its own city, community, faculty, and—above all—students.
design & architecture
The Architecture School building is constructed out of 288 recycled standard ISO steel shipping containers, of the kind seen in the ports, ships, trucks, and trains around the world. The “floor” and “roof” of each stepped volume is an inhabitable platform of 12 such containers, while the perimeter walls are standard glass-panelled aircraft hanger doors. The existing sheds on the site are restored and hybridized with additions that also deploy shipping containers. This adaptive reuse and upcycling of readymade technology is an economical, ecological, and polemical decision. It frees the building from the architectural style of any one place or time or person. It respects the no-nonsense industrial language of the existing steel-roofed railway sheds and steel-sided trains. It sustains the embodied carbon footprints and robust high-structure/high-insulation assets of shipping containers as universal tools.
program & use
The outer (Southeast) volume is programmed THINK—that is, the work of the mind—with the “roof” plinths of each step containing archives, seminars, faculty offices, and PhD facilities, and the ground-level area under the raised “steps” featuring exhibitions, the civic kitchen, and common space. The inner (Northwest) volume, addressing the linear plaza at the heart of the new campus, is programmed MAKE—that is, the work of the hands—with the ground level featuring large/special fabrication labs, materials storage, and workshops, along with school administration offices and other support spaces inside the stepped plinths above.
Design studios are at the heart of both stepped volumes. With open sightlines and clear wayfinding, circulation of the eye and body is constant and continuous. The scale of each “step” is calibrated to the size of typical groups and workshops, articulating the space without walls. Because the floor level of each design studio extends from the open double-height volume of its own step into the enclosed single-height plinth below the next step, design studios offer a variety of acoustic, daylighting, and other environmental conditions. The interior landscape is seamless and porous. An into-onto-over-under circulation of ramps, stairs, pathways and bridges stitch and weave against the grain in section and plan. The result is an architecture of short-cuts and short-circuits, previews and flashbacks, formal and informal moments of THINK and MAKE—in which students find their own paths. The steps of the internal landscape in space support the steps of education through time.
impact & significance
The alignment between the residences and the Aarhus School of Architecture building establishes a “Community Campus”. The alignment along the proposed linear urban plaza extending to the Godsbanen building establishes a “Cultural Campus”. The Architecture School, a “Sectional Campus” in one building, overlaps with both zones, supporting a coherent and continuous neighborhood.
