Singapore, Republic of Singapore
Erik L’Heureux at the School of Design and Environment of the National University of Singapore along with CPG Consultants has renovated and transformed a former 1970s institutional building into a contemporary educational venue combining concepts such as design education, peer learning, and public debates.
The project has been awarded a 2021 International Architecture Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The ongoing adaptive reuse project reinvents the strength and legacy of a 1970s institutional building to accommodate the net-zero energy, high-comfort academic environment of the future.
It serves as a scaffold for learning, teaching, and research for the twenty-first century, to inspire upcoming generations in design and sustainability.
In reusing its carbon form, the project advocates the need to minimize new carbon expenditures in construction and resource consumptions through a series of simple visual subtractions and removals.
The project interfaces a large academic campus and wider urban context to support the School’s ambitions in inspiring public appreciation for design and performance.
The design capitalizes on a frontal architectural form of two conjoined blocks — and enwraps them with an artistic, deep envelope.
The parasitic, lightweight aluminum facade hangs onto the superstructure creating a 1.5-m wide volume of air encasing the west elevation.
It ascends as a gradient while inverted gables increase in height, enabling the many dynamics of the equatorial atmosphere to play out uniquely on every level.
Replacing the campus aesthetic of grey louvers and mosaic tiles, the champagne-gold filigree emulates the diffused quality of the equatorial sun, rendering the building as a background edifice, as a counter-aesthetic to modernist spectacularity.
The north block originally housed large-span, studio spaces on four tiers to separate student cohorts.
The renovation rethinks this stratification by inserting a vertical social core with large student commons surrounded by public review spaces with flexible partitions leading into design studios.
The social core improves spatial volume asserting the importance of enhanced air movement and daylight in the equatorial context.
The original labyrinth of service ducts and deep false ceilings is replaced by sleek, cutting-edge environmental and building intelligence systems exposing the structural underside.
Coupled with hybrid cooling systems, it reduces energy demand for air conditioning by combining tempered air with natural air movement for occupant health and comfort.
The reductive visual palette of exposed ducts, grey soffit, and timber accents delicately balances the new within the old.
The south block renovation involved an internal reorganization of faculty office spaces and de-concretizing the central courtyard by removing a large, service core.
A framed jungle of spontaneous landscape is designed to occupy this space with numerous ecological, hydrological, and social benefits beyond visual relief.
Between the blocks, an upgraded Grand Staircase — interspersed by greenery and a modest light-well — highlights the public thoroughfare deeper into the campus.
Situated within the proposed net-zero energy, low-carbon precinct, the 2,000 sqm renovation will host building-integrated photovoltaics to meet energy demands of the building, with surplus transfer to the campus microgrid.
Holistically, the renovated School of Architecture will showcase new prototypes of sustainable design that infuse the campus with a new sense of architectural quality and environmental stewardship on the Equator.
Project: School of Design and Environment 1 & 3
Architects: Erik L’Heureux, Special Projects, School of Design and EnvironmentArchitects of Record: CPG Consultants Pte Ltd.
Client: National University of Singapore
General Contractor: Lian Soon Construction Pte Ltd.
Photographers: Ong Chan Hao and Erik L’Heureux
