NTU Academic Building South
The NTU Academic Building South presents a significant opportunity to strengthen the University’s progressive research and learning in the Engineering Schools of Material Sciences and Mechanical and Aerospace Aeronautics.
Client
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Area
40,000 m²
Location
Singapore
Status
Proposed
Concept
The design responds to the prestigious site and the outward looking philosophy of the buildings primary occupant – the business school. This approach allows the building to have an open and engaged quality – an appropriate, bespoke response to the site.
Our breathable building establishes a new typology for tropical sustainability on the contemporary higher learning campus. The floor plan is fragmented and the edges are smoothed similar to that of the nautical approach. The resultant form is a landscape infused, permeable building. Circulation opportunities through the building are maximised with an emphasis on incidental travel through the social spaces.
The design knits the site into the context and draws the landscape into the interior, creating a green and healthy building. A significant, memorable space creates a symbolic and ceremonial heart for the campus and instilling a deep sense of community.
Context
Importantly we have endeavoured to make the building address its setting and respond to the very diverse building quality and formal aesthetic that creates its context. We do this by ensuring we create a series of memorable places around and within the building itself. The courtyard, in particular, is designed as a Great Room – this will be a unique space for students, staff and visitors to the campus to occupy and enjoy.
Sustainability
The design will create a healthy environment for occupants and has sustainability as its core tenet. NTU has lead the way in developing new typologies for the Tropical campus and our design for the Academic Building South will deliver another BCA Green Mark Platinum project on campus, reinforcing NTU’s focus on sustainability and conceiving buildings as communities.
Whilst sustainable attributes and material selection associated with the targeted Platinum rating are a given, our design is inherently energy and natural resource efficient in the Tropical context. External solar control strategies are simple and effective and large roof overhangs shade the façade and activated outdoor areas. The deep courtyard roof overhang in particular will eliminate solar heat gain through glazed partitions facing into the ‘external’ heart of the building, allowing transparent glass to be used for truly effective activation of the façade.
The static, low maintenance external façade screening is custom built with long lasting materials, providing additional solar heat gain protection and importantly mitigating glare in workspaces and digital studios. Screened skylights in the expansive courtyard roof overhang provide filtered light to the Great Room and promote airflow and stack effect venting of hot air. Extensive water features in the courtyard provide cooling benefit to social spaces and activated, unconditioned circulation routes.
Despite the north-south orientation of the site, the planning of the building has creatively managed to deliver the bulk of accommodation in narrow floor plates ideally orientated along an east-west axis. Thermal analysis has proven this considered, permeable building form promotes good natural airflow, allowing the building to breathe.
| Local Architect in Association | A61 Architects |
| KIRK NTU Academic Building South Competition Booklet | NTU Academic Building |
