LOPO Project: Guangzhou International Campus of South China University of Technology
Leading Architect: Ni Yang
Architects: Institute of Architectural Design, South China University of Technology
Location: Nancun Town, Panyu District, Guangzhou
Led by China and partnered with multiple stakeholders, the Guangzhou International Campus of South China University of Technology (SCUT) is the first-of-its-kind international campus in China. With each faculty collaborating with the world’s top 100 universities, it focuses on the development of cutting-edge science and technology, such as new materials, artificial intelligence, biomedicine, life and health, green building, smart city, ecological environment, to name but a few.
Facing Guangzhou Higher Education Mega Center across the river, the new campus covers an area of about 110,500 square meters with a planned floorage of 1.4 million square meters. The project will be constructed in two phases, with the first phase of 500,000 square meters delivered in mid-2019.
The new campus is planned as a relatively neat and uniform urban block layout to improve the efficiency of the building layout and campus traffic. Each block has an outdoor courtyard and an indoor atrium, planted with different flowers and trees to create different colors and landscapes. A waterfront belt is formed by introducing the hydrographic net from off-the-campus source. The waterfront belt divides the campus into two sections, a north and south bank. There is a student community on the north bank, which includes students’ dormitories, sports complexes, cafeterias and activity centers. Whereas the south bank of the campus serves as teaching and learning area, featuring public laboratories, a library and office buildings of different faculties.
When it comes to the architectural design, a perfect combination of Chinese and Western style is achieved. The color of the new campus facade stays consistent with that of the old campus, featuring red-terracotta-brick slopes as its roof; sunshades are used to meet the needs of insulation, lighting and ventilation. This is a typical “Red-brick University”as the facade of the entire new campus is covered with terracotta cladding materials, which is consistent with the characteristics of the traditional Lingnan（South of 5 mountains in Southern China） building materials. It also accommodates architects’ design concept to create a green building with low energy consumption and high energy efficiency.
LOPO China provided nearly 80,000 square meters of terracotta cladding products for this project, including a variety of thin brick, facing brick, terracotta panels and terracotta baguettes. The facade of the public experiment platform of the campus adopts three types of LOPO’s wirestruck thin brick with different shades. With the help of natural texture of terracotta, it renders a warm and peaceful campus ambience. The buildings in the data center area chooses LOPO’s full brick. Staggered openwork masonry is used to add a rich architectural texture to the facade. The facade of the teaching and research buildings of each college adopts LOPO’s terracotta rainscreen system, in which the gridded terracotta curtain wall is installed in front of the glass, forming a harmonious combination with the prefabricated concrete wall panels.
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