Neuer Campus der Vietnamesisch-Deutschen Universität / New Campus of the Vietnamese-German University

URBAN CONCEPT

At the heart of any great campus lies a great lawn. The word campus was first used to describe the grounds of a college at Princeton in 1774. Derived from the Latin word campo, meaning “field”, campus has since evolved to include all grounds, buildings, and facilities of an institution; however it is important to underline the origin of this term
and its implications. In focusing on the historical relevance of the term campus, it can be established that a university primarily derives its identity from its green spaces, rather than its built forms. It is this public green space which provides the setting for some of the most important activities on a university campus, be it an informal study group, creative performance, sporting event or simply an afternoon nap. For this reason, an ideal campus is organized around its outdoor space. Beginning with the central lawn, the entire campus is populated with a variety of green spaces which decrease in scale and increase in privacy as they move towards the periphery. The green spaces mark the most public
and social areas as well as the most private and contemplative. At the center of the site, a great lawn extends down a central axis from the north. Bound by the academic facilities
clustered along either side, the lawn provides a central focus to the university; an orientation point from which all academic buildings are accessible. The lawn remains relatively untreated except for a few clusters of trees to provide areas of shade. In a way, the central lawn is a blank slate, constantly activated and transformed by the students and faculty who use it. This lawn is clearly defined by a ring of academic buildings lining the perimeter and providing additional facilities for academic and social exchange.
This network of buildings and the central lawn comprise an academic zone from which the remaining university elements connect. The residential buildings are distributed among four clusters which surround the central zone. The overlaps of these zones become the main academic buildings, ensuring that no residential building lies too far from the academic center, resulting in an efficient, compact, and pedestrian friendly campus that
minimizes the dependence on vehicles . In the space between the residential clusters a series of small parks bring the natural landscape into the center of the campus. In this configuration, learning, living, and leisure are always in perfect balance.


ARCHITECTURAL CONCEPT

The academic buildings are arranged parallel to one another, flanking the central lawn. Each academic building has one façade oriented towards the lawn. Perpendicular to the main academic facilities, a series of communal programs intersect and weave through the academic spaces. The resulting network creates a series of small intimate and shaded courtyards which double as exterior study spaces and classrooms.
The buildings themselves are simple and flexible in construction. Influenced by traditional Vietnamese struc- tures and their climate-responsive approach, the buildings consist of stacked slabs supported by columns. The horizontal surfaces provide protection from the sun and rain, while the vertical surfaces are light and porous to maximize natural ventilation and minimize the need for air conditioned spaces. In this way, the architecture is inspired by the way that traditional Vietnamese structures function, rather than how they appear.

The slabs are loaded with flexible program which can be expanded and reconfigured with minimal impact to the structural framework. Areas between the slabs can be left open and used as shaded outdoor multi-function spaces. They can be filled as needed as the University’s program evolves over time. In this way, the university can stay nimble and responsive by expanding in small increments. The academic buildings are wrapped in operable bamboo panels which further mitigate the solar impact upon the buildings.
The primary circulation is often exterior and pushed to the perimeter of the buildings. These spaces form an in- habitable transition zone between interior and exterior. They serve as extensions of the classrooms offering students a chance to study and socialize in a cool shaded space.


LANDSCAPE DESIGN

As the weaving of program has inspired the architectural geometry of the VGU campus master plan, the idea of overlapping is central to the landscape concept of this campus in the Binh Duong province. The loosely interwoven buildings and/or slabs result in an ambiguously interiorized yet continuous landscape enriched by the region’s nature. The fusion of typical university campus grounds and the surrounding Vietnamese landscape in this series of in/out spaces created by the architecture provide the appropriate environment for traditional outdoor living in Vietnamese culture. Overlapping landscape types create an array of specific spaces according to adjacencies. Moreover, the composite of systems supply the pedestrian campus with the needed abundant interconnections.
A sequence of interconnected landscape types, in conjunction with the built program, transition from the surroundings to the heart of VGU campus:

THE PARK. This green belt was created all around VGU in an effort to prolong the forested zone to the south, the park following the river to the north and provide extensive park areas for the surrounding neighborhoods (past and future) and the university. The mostly flat continuous intermediary zone shaped by site limits, residencies and university grounds, is traversed by the few vehicular entryways into the site: the main entry in the North and the park- ing entrance on both East and West sides. In a similar language, as extensions of the orthogonal grid of the campus, direct formal pedestrian paths provide access from the periphery while the park has its own informal meandering for wandering path system. Riparian zones characterize its two northern corners, East and West.

THE RESIDENTIAL CLUSTERS. Four residential clusters, situated towards the exterior of the campus as transition with the surrounding residential neighborhoods, are at each corner of the university grounds. Their landscape type acts as intermediary between park and campus, more as an extension of the park in which lay independent residential buildings. Its medium sized green expanses are crossed by the connections between buildings: linear pergolas, extensions of the ground floor of each building and direct links between entrances. These shaded exterior spaces are characterized by long benches for the 4m wide ones, small groups of tables for the 8m wide and large cafeteria type spaces on the ones larger than 12m. These wide paths, complimentary extensions of the interior, welcome a variety of activities associated with the residential vocation of this part of the campus and sustaining a traditional Vietnamese outdoor lifestyle.


THE UNIVERSITY GROUNDS. The academic heart of the project occupies the center of the site and is contained by a ring of circulation for the shuttle bus. The architecture subdivides it in three distinct functional types of exterior campus spaces.
Firstly, the overlap of the residential clusters’ corner and the university grounds creates a dense complex orthogonal weave of slabs resulting in small pervious courtyards on the ground floor and many in-out exterior spaces on all levels. Their size and continuous proximity are conducive to academic, social gatherings or individual studying. The remaining 2 large exterior zones of the academic grounds are occupied by the sporting facilities. The football field in the East zone and the various courts in the West zone are open to the public.
All the previous described facilities are distributed as a ring around a central lawn, the heart of VGU, based on the Anglo-Saxon/American model of the university main lawn. Characterized as a large trimmed grass surface traversed by paths as connection through and between faculties, the VGU’s is particular in its orthogonal paths, the presence of trees for shade and its water feature at its southern edge for natural cooling and grey water collection.

THE GROUND COVER. Inspired by the surrounding vegetation’s fabric but reinterpreted and scaled down, a
patterned ground treatment is meant to underline the continuousness of the landscape while providing variation. The free-formed pattern pervades the project’s pervious surfaces adding spatial, visual and usage variety. Breaking programmatic borders and grid, it acts as connective tissue between all zones except of course on the sacred, central university lawn. Elsewhere, if we consider lawn as base, the pattern is composed of 3 types or colors: tall grass, blooming grass (meadow) and mineral. These alternating ground coverings have all the same sustainability objectives: minimize high-maintenance lawns while using local ground cover that survive drought periods and minimize runoff during raining season.

THE TREE COVER. Mainly motivated by the need for shade, an efficient local traditional passive climatic regulator, a Redwood tree cover pervades all zones of the campus except off course the sporting facilities. This untamed layer also acts as a unifying gesture for the campus’ identity. Coming in wildly from the surroundings, it grows into the site: taking over the park to create a true forest, providing intimacy between buildings in the residential area, fill- ing the vertical spaces between slabs on the faculty grounds and bringing shade into the main lawn, creating a truly Vietnamese version of the university lawn. The systems composing VGU’s landscape concept (the 3 programmatic zones, the ground cover pattern and the tree cover layer) overlap or not on certain zones thus providing within the campus a variety of spaces that answer the local lifestyle needs of students, professors and visitors. Most importantly, a panoply of connections, this mix of formal paths, sometimes pergola spaces, sometimes truly exterior routes act as continuous transition between interior-exterior, private-academic and public-social life.