Perhaps best known for his designs for the new capital of Brazilia and for his collaboration on the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, Oscar Niemeyer, who by then was an exile from his home country of Brazil and had established an office in Paris, was commissioned in 1968 by Houari Boumediene, Algeria’s socialist president, to help transform the county which had only gained independence six years earlier into a new modern nation for the modern world through two new university campuses – the University of Mentouri in Constantine and the Houari Boumediene University of Science and Technology on the outskirts of Algiers plus the Olympic sports hall “La Coupole”.

Today, these campuses remain much as Niemeyer left them, with decay through time, neglect, vegetation growth and the effect of earthquake.  The curves and sculptural shapes of the concrete architecture have been caught by the photographer Jason Oddy in “Concrete Spring: Oscar Niemeyer, Algeria and The Architecture of Revolution” on show in the Embassy of Brazil in London, an exhibition organised by Laurent Delaye Art Projects in collaboration with the Embassy and Coya London.  

“I was drawn to this architecture because of its relevance to now. Niemeyer’s architecture was trying to do then what these political movements in the region are trying to do now; to open up societies and to improve democracy………Niemeyer’s spaces are very democratic – they have a very democratic feel to them, and were built by Niemeyer to foster a democratic attitude between student bodies and between faculties. As an example, the Humanities Block at the University of Mentouri was designed with no barriers between departments, to try and remove hierarchies.’  (Jason Oddy)

University designers are still seeking to achieve many of Niemeyer’s aspirations fifty years later.

WU, originally founded in 1898, is the largest university for business/economics in Europe and is ranked as one of the best business schools in Europe.  After the Second World War, it’s reputation was such that most Austrian business executives and many politicians were alumni.  From 1966 the number of students increased dramatically and, in 1983, moved to another campus, which itself soon became too small for the growth in student numbers and a complete new campus has now been created, opening in October 2013 for a target number of 24,000 students.  Its arrival next to the exhibition centre of Vienna has acted as a catalyst for the regeneration of the area around it with new housing, including student residences.

“Internationalism, innovation, diversity – the new Campus WU is the concrete realization of WU’s vision for a modern university. The fundamental principles of the new architecture reflect the values and ideas we cherish at WU.

As a public institution, WU has lived up to its responsibility of building its new campus in an economical, ecological, and socially sustainable manner. WU’s decision to locate the new campus in Vienna’s second district will redefine this area and transform it into an educational hub. We have not only constructed new buildings, but in the process we have also given concrete realization to our ideas of what the university of the future should look like. The new campus is more than just a place for academic research and teaching and learning practical skills; it is also designed to create a new space for social, cultural, and political life.”  (WU website)

The 25 acre (10 ha) campus has 6 groups of buildings designed around a master plan devised by BUSarchitektur and the architect Laura P. Spinadel.  The individual buildings were commissioned by international competition won by architectural firms from Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and Austria.  The campus cost 492 million Euros and was completed in three years, an astonishing achievement.

At the heart is the futuristic 28,000 sq metres Library & Learning Centre designed by Zaha Hadid. The LLC comprised of five cores, each with a different geometry.  Walls and staircases are inclined at different angles to create a variety of spaces which WU has yet to capitalise on.  Visitors enter the building into the immense atrium which also serves as WU’s main reception area and a conference/commemoration space. Inside LCC is Student Services, IT Services, the International Office and the central library for the campus.

The building is however currently surrounded by protective hoardings after a piece of concrete cladding estimated to weigh 80 kilograms fell off earlier in the year.  Parts of the adjacent pedestrian street and the space beneath the cantilevered upper levels has been closed off.

One of the joys of the LLC is the café, which is a great space to eat, drink and study and spreads out to the adjacent terrace.  The food is fresh and, compared to London, good value for money.

Taking a lesson from the problems with the LLC and given the scale of business investment in new buildings, why do business schools not do more to teach about the briefing, commissioning and execution of new buildings to support their business objectives.

“The Business School encompasses formal teaching spaces, while The Hub offers a vibrant street café ambience where students trade ideas and knowledge. It is the antithesis of the archetypal cloistered halls of academia……Our resulting designs evolved in response to a number of questions. How could a building physically manifest an expression of the University’s ambitious, extrovert attitude? And how could we create a study environment akin to the workplaces students would eventually inhabit? The answer was to create an environment that was part corporate HQ, part university.”  (Feilden Clegg Bradley)

The architects collaborated with the artist Martin Richman in the design concept of a glass crystal with a façade that refracts and reflects light to animate the inside, changing with different aspects of the sun and light outside through the year and through the day.

Inside, the building is planned around three 12 m wide flexible floor plates separated by two atria, also 12 m wide, the taller of which is occupied by the Business School, the smaller by the Sudent Hub.  Formal teaching and informal social learning spaces are positioned across the building at all levels, reinforcing that this is a student-focussed building.

Sustainability is a key objective of the university and the architects responded to this with a design that includes a ground source heat pump for heating and cooling, heat from  areas that require cooling, such as IT rooms, being used elsewhere in the building or to pre-heat the domestic hot water supply, a 1,000msq photovoltaic array on the roof and chilled water pipe-work cast into the pre-cast concrete floor slabs to minimise the use of mechanical equipment and also make use of the building’s thermal mass.

The design achieves a building which is a landmark on the campus as it develops further and internally is light, transparent and visually permeable.

“The optical properties of the building, where light is refracted and reflected into bands of colour, projecting into and out from the building, has truly created the jewel in MMU’s crown.” (John Brooks, Vice-Chancellor MMU)

The photographs are by the Hong Kong photographer Edmon Leong and first published in Deezeen Magazine.  For a university building and one focused on creativity, the interiors appear stark in white and shades of grey and too controlled.  Hopefully once the students become used to the building, they will soften it and add some colour and further layers of creativity, but without compromising the essence of Hadid’s design.