The Design Takes The Organisation of Public Spaces within The Overall Campus as a Starting Point

This laboratory and oice building for the newly established deep-ocean research base of Tsinghua University is located at the eastern end of Tsinghua graduate school campus in Shenzhen Xili University Town, and right next to the main campus entrance. Instant university towns are recent Chinese  urbanisation in epitome: far away from city centres, they are often over-scaled, and lack humanistic concern and its related services. 

With the Ocean Center, the designers sought to create a building that presents new possibilities an open and welcoming atmosphere, with injected public spaces to encourage staf and students to participate and socialise; The design takes the organisation of public spaces within the overall campus as a starting point. Instead of terminating the campus’ main axis on the plan, the building folds the axis to extend it upwards, with abundant public spaces injected along the way. The conventional quad typology for university campuses is re-interpreted here, to form a lively vertical quad system.   

Project Information

Project Name: Tsinghua Ocean Center

Location: China

Architect: Hu Li