In February last year, Bond University, located in the Australian state of Queensland, announced the opening of a new faculty ("school") of architecture. The initiator of its creation and a generous patron of the arts was a Bond alumnus - a well-known developer Sohail Abedyan; the faculty will be named after him.
School of Architecture. Sohaila Abedyan was supposed to open in January 2011. However, the competition for the projects of its building has dragged on: its results have been announced only now - Peter Cook's workshop CRAB has won.
Designing a building for any educational institution is undoubtedly a challenge, but the architects have successfully coped with it, especially since CRAB recently worked for the University of Vienna. It helped even more that Peter Cook is a teacher with great experience and knows firsthand how best to organize the educational process.
The new building will be located on the campus, the plan for which was created by Arata Isozaki in 1987, when the university was just beginning its existence. It will be attached to the School of Sustainability building. The facades of the building will combine glazed and wooden surfaces. The slabs will be designed as a series of concrete "buckets" that simultaneously conduct sunlight into the interior and protect it from overheating. Two-story studios will be located along one side of the longitudinal axis, offices and laboratories on the other. The building will be connected to the surrounding garden by terraces; some of the premises will be underground.
M. Ch., N. F.
