Nanyang Technological University

This new school of art, design, and media preserves open space, while serving as a green icon for the university. When Nanyang Technological University (NTU), revisited its Kenzo Tange designed master plan in 1993, it designated a green belt at the heart of the 500-acre campus as open space. But as the schools land became increasingly scarce, the new School of Art, Design, and Media needed a permanent home, so with the help of the Singapore-based architecture firm CPG Consultants, which came with extensive experience working on the master plan, NTU built an environmentally friendly non-building building, that would allow it to build on the central green space without taking away from it.

Formed by two sloping, tapering arcs that interlock with a third, smaller arc, the School of Art, Design, and Media is a 5 story structure housing more than two dozen studios and laboratories, two galleries, and as many lecture halls, alongside classrooms, a soundstage, a 450-seat auditorium, and other spaces spanning a library to prototyping rooms.