images © Hufton+Crow

In a morning in March, Thomas Heatherwick gave a presentation to a packed classroom on the campus of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Two dozen academics and journalists had gathered in Learning Hub, the designer’s latest project, for its grand unveiling. As Heatherwick clicked through PowerPoint slides, televisions mounted on the room’s curved walls flashed with his celebrated projects: the London 2012 Olympic cauldron, the revamped London buses, the proposed Garden Bridge.The circular desks had inbuilt internet ports and plug sockets. There was not a white board in sight.

Learning Hub, designed by Heatherwick Studio and CPG Consultants, a Singaporean developer, seeks to reassert the “role of an educational building in the 21st century”, according to a press release. Since the first students gathered in the cloisters and quads of Oxford in the 11th century, our idea of what centres of higher learning should look like has not changed much (cloisters and quads are often still the ideal). Educational buildings have been designed to a particular function. Students have long needed lecture halls to hear lecturers speak.......Continue Reading

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