After two and a half years of construction, British designer Thomas Heatherwick's Learning Hub for the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore has officially opened. Heatherwick, who's currently busy with a Garden Bridge in London and Google's new HQ in California, conceived this striking bundle of 12 hive-like towers as a way of subverting the traditional circulation and room layouts of educational buildings. Doing away with long corridors of box-like classrooms, in which professors lecture from the front and center, the new Learning Hub offers 56 flexible, corner-less "tutorial rooms" arranged around a permeable atrium.
As Design Boom explains, the dozen eight-story towers "taper inwards at their base," which is a porous ground level that allows people to enter from all directions. The 150,000-square-foot structure has concrete stair and elevator cores and its unusual curved façade also incorporates concrete "sculpted" from silicone molds.
· Thomas Heatherwick's learning hub in singapore comprises 12 tapered towers [Design Boom]
· A First Look at the Massive Modular Greenhouse BIG and Heatherwick Dreamed Up for Google [Curbed National]
· London Mayor Approves Critically Bashed Garden Bridge [Curbed National]
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