International School of Design

Building a new design school implies rethinking and to conceptualizing the fundamental spatial protagonists that vanguard the future challenges of the discipline. We propose a radical concept that both identifies the real needs of ISD turning it into typological ideas as well as into zones of great flexibility and openness. The context of the new Harbin Undergraduate Design Building generates a strong sense of an ensemble in which the central court and the vertical accentuation play a key role to identify the main entry. The development of a “court d’honneur” expresses a strong axiality and generates the main routing for the new Design School. The new Design School will be a gateway and a passage into the Harbin Campus.

Teaching Design is based on three crucial disciplines, the necessity to Communicate, to Produce and to Acquire knowledge. For these activities, we introduce different typological spaces resulting in a series of vertically structured volumes. Passage, slabs and a large studio shed are forming the vertical sequence of the building.