Located on a site of 83,000m2 and close to both Changi airport - Singapore’s principal airport - and the Changi Business Park, the SUTD is Singapore’s fourth public university.
Designed by UNStudio and DP Architects, the Singapore University of Technology and Design offers four key academic pillars: Architecture and Sustainable Design (ASD), Engineering Product Development (EPD), Engineering Systems and Design (ESD), and Information Systems Technology and Design (ISTD). The SUTD is a driver of technological innovation and economic growth, with the new academic campus acting as both a catalyst and a conveyor for advancement by bringing together people, ideas and innovation. Through collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a further partnership with Zhejiang University (ZJU), the SUTD combines the best practices and values of the East and the West.
The design for the new academic campus directly reflects SUTD’s curriculum, using the creative enterprise of the school to facilitate a cross-disciplinary interface: interaction is established between the professional world, the campus, and the community at large. The design for the campus offers an opportunity to embrace innovation and creativity through a non-linear connective relationship between students, faculty, professionals and the spaces they interact with.
Sustainable Learning
The term sustainable learning refers to the understanding of the future of campus design as shaped by an activating, adaptive transparent and connective environment. The new SUTD academic campus will facilitate cross-disciplinary interaction among all four pillars of academia, which is interlaced with the Humanities, Arts and Social Science curriculum and research. Following the master plan, the academic campus is designed through two main axes: the living and learning spines, which overlap to create a central point and bind together all corners of the campus. The design proposed a flexible space for exhibitions, events and interaction at this central node: this Campus Centre forms the intellectual heart of the campus and directly links the main programmatic anchors of the Auditorium, the International Design Centre and the University Library.
The spatial configuration of the academic campus generates a seamless network of education, a 24/7 campus which enhances direct interaction through both proximity and transparency. Programme relationships are linked both vertically and laterally, allowing interactivity that is both visual and physical. Both large and small communities can form as a result of the programme clusters and the voids and staircases that link them. The academic campus enables display and visibility throughout the buildings, the landscaped elements and the strategic diagonal connectivity, with the buildings and infrastructure operating as information carriers and enabling the display of research and discourse.
Collaboration between students and faculty is facilitated through informal meeting and working spaces, while flexible classrooms and laboratories enable different arrangements in order to satisfy varying lecture or workshop approaches to teaching. Adaptability within the planning of the spatial conditions allows for pedagogical flexibility and the integration of technology for the future use of the spaces. As the curriculum changes, the ability to reconfigure an instructional floor plan within a structural grid of 8.4m and modular façade grid of 1.4m allows the SUTD to adapt to the contemporary needs of technology and design education.