New Iconic Skynet at South Campus @ HKUST

New Skynet design for HK PolyU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNmf07EWzow

Significance of the Siting

Located at the Heart of the PolyU campus, the Logo Square performs as the central point of numerous campus activities for both students and teaching staff.

Synopsis

This project engages our work into a second dialogue with the works of Zaha Hadid Architects, in this case the Innovation Tower.

The design philosophy core to the whole PolyU campus has been quite consistently of red brick modules. While ZHA’s Innovation Tower “blends in” with the existing campus “by contrast” with its fluid form, our Skynet, closest at 50m from the Tower, deliberately takes an orthogonal and angular form in a variety of sizes to contrast with their provocative blend-in strategy.

Skynet takes on 2 metaphors. The form of the Skynet takes the metaphor of an organic tree, with the structural supports branching out to support the glass canopy in an organic geometric order. Also because of this environmental suggestion, the glass canopy is conceived as the sky. Glass of different hues of blue is used, creating a Skynet that is almost invisible.