CAFA Qingdao Campus // CAA Architects-卓美

CAA architects led by Liu Haowei announced the planning and architectural scheme of CAFA Qingdao Campus, which is directly entrusted by the Client. The new campus is a key strategic project for the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) to launch the new century strategy for the future. It is also an important measure for the college to expand its own operation space and develop a campus with future design disciplines as the core and the ocean cutting-edge science and technology as the characteristics.

The project is located on the South Bank of the West Coast New Area of Qingdao, and has a unique geographical location of living in the wilderness and facing the sky and the blue sea.

Meanwhile, it forms the whole West Coast Art Bay area with architectural groups such as the TAG Art Museum designed by Jean Nouvel. Based on a Free Wave, CAA uses its rhythmic lines to draw the outlines of the building and construct this organic living body, creating a dialogue with the art Bay area and the wider ocean and maintaining the coexistence of artistic freedom and rationality in creation.

The foundation of the project gradually descends from the hilly terrain in the east to the seaside in the west, and the positive and negative zero elevation of the plane coincides with the absolute elevation of China.

Taking this as the design context, CAA has made a unique response based on the relationship between the site and the ocean. The building is backed by a 6-meter-high hill, which fluctuates naturally along the trend of the mountain and grows continuously up to 33 meters. The vertical planning with rich levels has evolved into a large-scale curved roof garden.

Different space heights meet and adapt to the needs of sitting, lying, walking, running and other activities at the same time. This is a land art evolved from natural landscape. The whole building complex seems to rise gracefully from the field, forming an organic life body that grows towards the sea, and it is also like the freeze frame of the trend of the ocean waves surging ahead.

The water ripple texture of the waves gives the building an organic ecological horizontal zoning.

The virtual space of the courtyard is constantly divided like a cell. Each ring functional unit is connected by a network, and the internal function and traffic space penetrate each other, forming a multi-dimensional composite Mobius ring. The traditional classroom, library, laboratory, auditorium, dormitory and other independent units are connected into a free, open and circular whole.

The multiple ideas of art education interact and integrate in the flowing space, growing inward and extending outward simultaneously. The design scheme makes a forward-looking and far-reaching exploration and attempt for the possibility of the future art education system. This complex with the characteristics of life grows from the land and hills, just like a free wave pursuing a larger world.

Between the balance of people’s relationship with nature, site, ocean, architecture and education, the free growth of art and the rational brilliance of humanities will be applied to the planning, which will initiate CAFA’s exploring a new model of innovative education, independent scientific research, social service, and cultural inheritance..