Campus 44 - Detail
The Living Campus is designed to stimulate encounters between research, education, learning and life. Practice rooms, meeting areas, and learning spaces are woven together by new passageways, so that moving through the building becomes part of the experience.
The interior of Campus 44 starts from a radical gesture: the former modernist bank building is stripped back to its bare concrete shell. From this blank slate the new design takes shape, with an atmosphere rooted in the modernist and brutalist thinking of the original building. Where possible the concrete is left visible, and it is filled in again with elements that are organized, both conceptually and aesthetically, into distinct layers.
The first layer is the technical one. Pipes, ducts, light fittings and cable trays remain in view, executed in galvanized steel and aluminum. These materials are logical for technical installations, yet they also sit comfortably within the material palette of the original building. The second layer consists of new intermediate floors. Wooden floors and beams are left exposed, forming timber structures within the concrete shell that read clearly as new additions that can easily be removed later. The wood provides a warm contrast to the base of concrete and steel.
The third layer holds the interior partitions: aluminum system walls combined with steel and glass. Their rhythmic arrangement and bare aluminum once again refer to the stainless steel and concrete chosen in the historic design. The fourth layer is circulation. Sculptural staircases run through large voids across multiple floors and are given bold colors that accentuate wayfinding. Yellow, red and blue are taken from the paintbox of the early modernists.
The final layer is that of everyday objects: benches, chairs, tables and curtains. Made of wood, fabric and linen, they are warm and soft, and they balance the brutalist base. Together the layers form a clear, readable whole in which old and new remain distinguishable and complement one another.