How did you approach the challenge of designing a new building in a World Heritage setting?

Alice

This project is a brand new school but also part of the University’s long-term vision and a cornerstone for the development of an entirely new campus district. We were familiar with Hopkins’ work and were confident that they would get who we are, and be able to translate that into a building which also established a new architectural language on an historic campus.

I’d say this is a landscape-first campus, and Hopkins have achieved a beautiful integration of architecture and landscape, setting a benchmark for buildings that will come later, and in a way that starts to provide connectivity across the site. Much of the design was done online throughout the pandemic, so kudos to Hopkins for being able to understand the culture of the place through the internet!

This part of the Ivy corridor is relatively flat, but the topography all around is pretty unique, with enormous trees everywhere and a sense of vertical greenery. The building responds to that with various lookouts. Every time you come to a landing, there's a beautiful window and a beautiful vista out to the landscape.

There's something beautiful about a building that looks like it's come up out of this place, and that the idea and the architectural language belongs to us. It's not just the materiality, but the proportions, the orientation of the windows, its relationship to the landscape.

Mike

Sometimes not being a specialist, gives you the opportunity to bring a fresh approach and to think forensically about exactly what's needed, without any prior assumptions. That’s how we approached UVA. It was the first move in the creation of a brand new district and on a very significant site, so it was both challenging and exciting.

In many ways the exterior is more complicated that the interior, due to the historic resonance of the existing Jeffersonian buildings. He put a new piece of campus together which is now a World Heritage Site, and an inspiration to anyone doing any university work anywhere in the world at any time. Our challenge was to reference that in a way that inspires rather than constrains the project

One of the ways we’ve done that is with the portico at the front, which is both a threshold and a symbolic entrance, acting as a welcome to the whole Ivy corridor. It’s a very contemporary gesture gives and provides a strong sense of scale. Our design takes you through the landscape and portico into the building, up the staircase which turns back on itself and out onto the front terrace looking towards all that fantastic Jefferson stuff. For me that was a lovely way to acknowledge that legacy.

This building is highly contextual – if you took it away from this site and put it somewhere else, it would make no sense. It’s been very carefully crafted to its location and is completely different from anything we’ve done at Yale, or Princeton, or Harvard, or Oxford or Cambridge.

How does the building support a culture of collaboration?

Alice 

The School is informed by a School Without Walls concept. Part of its mission is to be welcoming, accessible and inclusive, and to integrate students from every school. The staircase that Mike just described allows for intermingling and cross-disciplinary conversation. All the major common spaces - the hub, student reading room, roof terrace - enable easy collaboration and enliven the experience of the building. We wanted that kind of vitality to be part of this whole district. Even though the majority of work is done in open collaborative space, people still sometimes just need to to shut the door and do their thing.

Mike 

This is a very lively building and a lively faculty in terms of the people, who have a real focus and energy, and a real sense of mission. We really wanted  the energy from this building to spill out. Our consultation process with everyone at UVA  influenced the overall shape of the building.

This building is highly sociable with breakout spaces in the center and gets progressively quiet and studious as you go towards the perimeter. Classrooms are located road-side with big windows so they could really create a presence on that street, with active learning and teaching on display. Designing a project during a pandemic was interesting. It made us ask -  if remote working is possible, why and when do we need to come together? It re-emphasised the importance of social contact and exchange, and the role of serendipity in research and academic conversations. 

How important has sustainability been in the project’s design?

Alice 

This district has its own sustainable goals. This is a working landscape and we are very conscious of our carbon footprint. The project sits in a low-lying area, so we’ve had to deal with a water in a way that turns it into an amenity. 

Mike 

We made some good collective decisions early on which have resulted in building which was efficient in construction as well as being efficient in energy use. We made sure that the building is the right size. We don’t have a basement, the plant rooms are really small, services in the ceilings have been squeezed to the absolute minimum, which has taken an enormous amount of work from the design team. You have less space to heat, less space to build and pay for, and it produced less carbon in construction.  

Inside, everything is honestly expressed rather than having lots of finishes. the steel and columns are all on display. Having natural building ventilation in a climate like this is difficult but the answer is to have very efficient and zoned mechanical systems, which we have. Building-wide measures are balanced with individual offices where you can open your own windows.

How do you want the new school to impact the wider community?

Alice 

This is a major civic building and speaks to the importance we place on science today. It’s designed to be an open invitation for academics and industries around the world to participate. We will have a hotel and conference center, and the Institute for Democracy close by. There will be programmes that are integrated all of these buildings and will make the campus a very lively place to be.