Learning Hub at Nanyang Technological University
Location: Singapore
Architect: Heatherwick Studio
Completed: 2015

Photo: Hufton + Crow

When Thomas Heatherwick's Studio entered the competition to design a new learning hub for Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, it won in part thanks to the way its concept proposed a building that reimagined and redefined the standard typology of an educational building, defined by the studio as 'endless corridor, no natural daylight and only hints of other people's presence'.

Photo: Hufton + Crow

The hub, part of a £360 million scheme, consists of 56 tutorial rooms inside interlinked towers which surround an atrium. Although the towers, which are clad in concrete, have been liked to the stacked wooden baskets in which dim sum is steamed and served, their shape is distinctly organic. There are barely any straight lines in the whole building, making it feel far more like something that has developed naturally than a man-made building.