The masterplan presents a forward-looking vision with a sensitivity tuned to creating cohesiveness between the natural landscape and a vibrant creative and academic environment. Our team’s approach to the design for the SIDI campus bring together two these two key principles that is outlined in the design brief: Harmony and Innovation.
Within a campus plan, indeed the creation of a harmonic and innovative campus are key, unexpectability yet a maintaining of clarity are just as important. The masterplan was looking at the decent from the mountainscape into the more urban campus and reflects this transition formally and experientially.
The connection of the campus to nature, is seen here as an overhaul or an inscision into and through the mountain. The terrain is careved and controlled, yet the feel and overall demener of the project holds true to the landscape. Each section is a plateau within the landscape, a peak if you will, that culminates a specific walk or path. The experience of the students on a daily basis was critical in the creation of the walk through the campus. And of course, removing and keeping vehicular traffic outside or away from these main arterys of experience were very important.
This project’s main concern with how people traverse a landscape, makes it an interesting and familiar act that gears your attention away from the campus itself and more into the experience of the landscape around you.
Many of the iconic buildings on site are accessed from the back of the site. This leaves their front and most visible facade unemcombered and open to the view.
Iconicity within the campus is very important in that it clearly indicates a lot of the project’s intentionality and legibility. Showing the ultimate eclecticism of the campus but coherence in its push for innovation. As you arrive, you are met with the face of the campus in the exhibition and main lecture hall. But this grand gesture is met only with layers and layers of interesting backdrop. Where you eye is made to continue beyond and you are meant to be pulled upward.
The campus is broken down into five main elements or sections that hold a distinct character, but blur and blend at the periphery. The masterplan buildings are meant to hold a similar reading and legibility depeding on program, but are interspirsed in and around the main axis. Thus again, the eclectic and adventurous nature transmits from the human to the built, from the landscape to the masterplan.
The campus itself becomes an interesting experience in itself, one that leads to creativity and self exploration through the organic and wild proposal. One that seemingly is in control yet questions our true power within a natural landscape. And when each student arrives and experiences the start of their exploration, we intended the campus to grow and change with them.