YORK UNIVERSITY STUDENT CENTRE

The architecture of the new student centre at York University is generated through the intersection of five drivers that underlie the conceptual exploration of the design: HIVE/ representing the multiplicity of the individual and collective experiences of students; FULCRUM/ responsive to the centrality of the site; ICON/ amplifying the potential for this building to express student identity at York; LENS/ articulating the dynamic connectivity between the building’s community and its broader context of campus, city, and world; and FLUX/ which challenges the architecture to be infinitely responsive to change.

Investigated separately, each of the drivers provokes a diagrammatic exploration that examines how architecture can merge student experience with the many social, cultural and physical realms within which the building must operate. When composed together, these diagrams create a framework that goes beyond programmatic requirements and academic constructs and sets out an armature that is embedded in place, and frames student experience.