This week’s curated selection of the Best Unbuilt Architecture focuses on projects related to learning, research and culture submitted by the ArchDaily Community. From kindergartens to libraries and universities, the article explores how different spaces of knowledge around the world are designed to inspire their users.
Featuring an array of scales and architectural programs, the list of projects includes a circular library in South Korea, a bridge-like kindergarten in Poland, as well a university in Tel Aviv that creates a series of opportunities for unmediated interactions and unscripted learning. The following are architectural programs that cater to the dissemination of knowledge in all its forms and to all age and social groups.
Read on to discover 10 curated projects highlighting spaces of learning, research, and culture, along with their project descriptions from the architects.
The Library of SONGDO International City
The project stems from understanding this library will become a landmark of the city and an important public space that connects with its citizens. Therefore, two key spaces are carved out to create a Reading Hall and a Community Living Hall for people to gather and possibly host events or exhibitions. The comfortable reading spaces and multi-functional public space will reshape the value of the library as a cultural paradise for the citizens and a cultural landmark for visitors.
Adaptation Centre for Deafblind Young People
"Beacon" is an extension to the school for deafblind children where people 18 and older can acquire new spatial experiences. It's a complex where the patients should have a platform to re-establish their skills of interacting with the outside world in a kind of architectural, urban environment simulator. This concept is realized through several innovative spatial strategies and approaches, such as tactile navigation panels, models and maps, together with a meticulously organized site full of obstacles and walkways.
Tel Aviv University
Asaf Lerman in collaboration with BOND
The building consists of a series of triangular volumes surrounding a central axis. To the south, the rotation of the floors creates a series of terraced green balconies that will serve as an unmediated meeting and resting place for students and lecturers. Towards the west and north, the tilt creates an urban porch that strengthens the building's role as an interface between the city and the campus. The foundation floor is tilted inward, creating an outdoor space, and expanding the narrow sidewalk near the university station.
Pathways of Knowledge
The structure creates a journey within the building to simulate the road map for realizing the dream of education for all children.The project creates many paths around the Marula tree, in the middle of the site, and provides a spatial experience for the kids by creating in-between spaces which allow the kids to interact with them through a learning experience journey depending on "unknowing then knowing." The idea of the building is abstracted by using compressed earth blocks walls.
The Nature Gate
In collaboration with studio4SPACE, ENTROPIC has unveiled a proposal for mixed-use, consisting of a library and kindergarten in the Józefów Municipality in the outskirts of Warsaw. The plot is located in a unique, small forest with tall pines and a delicate ecosystem in the heart of a residential suburb. The project joins two rational boxes through an umbilical cord, functioning simultaneously as a connecting rooftop playground and a gateway.
Lot Fourteen Entrepreneur and Innovation Centre
The Entrepreneur and Innovation Centre (EIC) will be the centrepiece of Lot Fourteen, the home of South Australia's collaborative ecosystem of researchers, entrepreneurs, industry, creatives and government. The EIC is designed to bring industry and research together and accelerate the translation of ideas into commercially available products and services, focusing on defence, space, hi-tech, and creative industries. The interconnected spaces will be home to organizations ranging from small start-ups and research groups to large international enterprises.
Maatullin Primary School, Kindergarten & Playground
'The Forest Glade' is an urban forest school, inspired by its location in a lush and green park area in Helsinki's suburb Tapulikaupunki. The school is divided into a village of small wooden buildings placed around a circular green courtyard called 'The Forest Glade'. The program's division brings a human scale, improves wayfinding, and helps even the youngest students feel at home. The central courtyard is the heart of the community and invites students and residents to gather, learn and participate in events in a green and inspiring environment.
The Brain Project
As the ancient belief about microcosm and macrocosm that architecture shall resemble the order of body containing the secret of the structure of the universe, the design proposal for the library in Songdo S. Korea is inspired by the form and the function of the human 'brain'. As a brain, the library guides people to find information and knowledge by apps and devices. Still, it sub-consciously communicates with people through various architectural languages helping to discover the hidden treasures in their minds.
Hebrew Language Academy
Asaf Lerman in collaboration with Daniel Finkesltein & Elvira Turek
An array of pavilions, seemingly distinct, are carefully integrated into the wooded landscape and coincide into one cohesive whole. Each of the buildings stands designed on its own, but at the same time functions as part of the composition obeying the rules of a systemic syntax, from which all dimensions and proportions are derived. The Academy grows out of the site, carefully and precisely inherent in the process of organic germination. Its formal language, readable and carefully worded, expresses the Academy's accessibility to the general public.
Secondary School and Preschool
It is necessary for children to feel the flexibility of the forms surrounding them, their pliability of individual adjustment. We try to create a feeling of comfort and freedom. Compact planning is achieved by grouping educational facilities around recreation, open to the school hall, which unites all the functional departments into a single organism. An essential condition is the proximity of children to nature, minimizing spatial barriers between indoor and outdoor environmentS.
HOW TO SUBMIT AN UNBUILT PROJECT
We highly appreciate the input from our readers and are always happy to see more projects designed by them. If you have an Unbuilt project to submit, click here and follow the guidelines. Our curators will review your submission and get back to you in case it is selected for a feature.