Campus will include sustainable water management and perimeter woodland
Grant Associates, working with Boston architect Machado and Silvetti Associates, has won an international competition to design the Vietnamese-German University Campus in Binh Duong Province, Vietnam.
The project is a collaboration between the World Bank, the Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training and the German Hessen State Ministry of Science and Art that aims to develop an internationally accredited higher education programme for research and advancement for Vietnamese students and to build a campus for the new university.
Machado and Silvetti Associates will be responsible for the delivery of Phase 1, worth US$121 million, of the 50.5 hectare University Campus, with Grant Associates masterminding the landscape strategy. Phase 1 of the project is due for completion in November 2017.
Grant Associates’ landscape design proposal is for a multi-layered and multifunctional landscape that becomes an active living classroom, as well as a tool for restoring and improving the environment. There will be an extensive network of gateways, courtyards and green spaces to encourage outdoor learning and social interaction, interlinked by comfortable and engaging shaded routes.
The campus will have a native tropical woodland perimeter belt that will provide a strong multifunctional edge to the campus.
The campus design will include sustainable water management, with a ‘water treatment train’ of storm water attenuation, cleansing and filtration that will allow water to be recycled within the site for irrigation and maintenance.
At the core of the campus, which contains the key university buildings, the landscape approach will be most formal in character. The spaces are inspired by the urban grain of Ho Chi Minh District One with large tree-lined avenues and squares. These spaces will remain flexible to provide opportunity for large outdoor performance and events.
The Courtyard Gardens are designed to be more individual in character, each identifying with the functions of their immediate surrounding buildings. They will offer a series of articulated outdoor spaces for quiet seating and small study gatherings. The footpath network will offer circulation that is unrestricted yet intimate and sheltered.
