For Kansas State University, which has recently spearheaded an initiative to poise designers as “instruments for positive social change,” our friends at Ennead Architects, in collaboration with the Kansas City-based BNIM, have designed the College of Architecture, Planning and Design. The plan was conceived with a view towards creating an environment conducive to supporting curriculum newly adopted by the college, which trains future A+D professionals to learn how to connect with design through interdisciplinary collaboration as well as direct fabrication. And so, to this end, the interior architecture of the project permits a vast array of opportunities for communication across Architecture, Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning, Interior Architecture and Product Design departments, as well as departments related. Arrayed round a three-storey atrium, called the “Collaboration Corridor”, are studios, crit spaces—rooms which enable students and professors to critique work in an interactive and flexible learning space,—exhibition areas, and offices for faculty.
