The Learning Curve

Educational, medical, and office design reaches new heights

Deborah Wilk -- Interior Design, 5/1/2010 12:00:00 AM

Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa/SANAA

project École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland.
standout Inside the polytechnic's Rolex Learning Center, light wells, courtyards, and patios define an undulating open plan—with a grace recently cited by the judges of the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
photography Roland Halbe.

PAL Design Consultants

project Winning Real Estate Group, Hangzhou, China.
standout Multicolored fluorescents enhance transluscent honeycomb panels and faceted plasterboard forms, turning a mundane sales office into a luminous landscape.
photography Courtesy of PAL Design Consultants.


Gnädinger Architekten

project Otto Bock Science Center Medizintechnik, Berlin.

standout Human muscle fiber inspired the bands that wrap the reinforced-concrete frame of this six-story medical facility.
photography Courtesy of the Otto Bock Science Center Medizintechnik.


Ministry of Design

project Face to Face, Singapore.
standout Strips of LED and fluorescent light visually connect this office building's exterior to the interior, where a spiral staircase literally links the ground level to basement meeting rooms.
photography Edward Hendricks/CI&A Photography.


Caterina Tiazzoldi/Nuova Ordentra

project Toolbox, Turin, Italy.
standout At this incubator facility, painted Styrofoam boxes stack seemingly at random in reception, a foretaste of the decorative walls that enclose mini offices for separate endeavors.
photography Sebastiano Pellion di Persano.


UAU

project Hitech Systems, Leini, Italy.
standout Opposites attract at this headquarters—whether curves and angles or cast concrete and curtain wall.
photography Enrico Muraro.