If art school was in our future we might opt to study under, or on top of, the amazing green roof at the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. This 5 story facility sweeps a wooded corner of the campus with an organic, vegetated form that blends landscape and structure, nature and high-tech and symbolizes the creativity it houses.
The glass façade provides a high performance building envelope that reduces solar gain and heat load while allowing the benefits of natural views and daylight into creative spaces.
The glass walls provide a visual exchange between indoors and out allowing students and teachers to experience the building, the surrounding landscape and the interior plaza as fluid spaces. Diffused natural daylight is abundant throughout studios and classrooms, filtered through the surrounding foliage.
The curving green roofs distinguish the building from among the other structures on campus but the line between landscape and building is blurred. The roofs serve as informal gathering spaces challenging linear ideas and stirring perception. The roofs create open space, insulate the building, cool the surrounding air and harvest rainwater for landscaping irrigation. Planted grasses mix with native greenery to colonize the building and bond it to the setting. Finishes are intentionally raw to act as a backdrop for the art, media and design projects. Concrete walls and columns, cement-sand screeded floors, timber railings and a neutral palette define the interior spaces which vary in shape and size.
This amazing design seems to offer a new experience at every elevation or perspective fulfilling the intent that a school for art should inspire creativity. And it doesn’t stop there. The roofs are nice to look at and sit on, yes. But architecturally, they add so much more. The roofs insulate the building, harvest rainwater and cool the surrounding air. The roofs define the building yet help to marry it with its surroundings through planted grasses intermixed with native greenery.
The landscape it sits in makes it look like a huge bionic plant which emerged from the trees that are surrounding it. The wide green loops it uses as a roof seem weightless on top of five stories of glass and steel and embraces the water fountain in the middle. The building uses eco lighting and collects the rainwater. Also the green roof provides excellent insulation. The project received the Green Mark Platinum Award from Singapore Building and Construction Authority (BCA) for environmental sustainability in 2011. A masterpiece of art , design and engineering that produces artists, designers and engineers…the beginning of a cycle. Homesthetics conclusion : A great project with a great purpose. Stuning architecture and design enforced with consideration for the environment and innovative engineering. A home-run overall.
