Design Solution · Interior & Wellbeing
Design Solution · Dream about it
A multi-storey connected void acting as a vertical quad.
A connected sequence of open spaces threads through every level as a vertical courtyard, replacing the campus quad that a tall building loses. The interconnected void encourages planned and incidental encounter and gives the institution a shared identity over many floors. It counters the social fragmentation of stacked floor plates.
Threading a connected sequence of open spaces through every level of a tall building to replace the horizontal campus quad is a social infrastructure argument: it acknowledges that stacked floor plates fragment institutional identity and daily encounter, and proposes a spatial counterweight. The logic is borrowed from the atrium tradition — void and visual connection across floors encourage incidental meeting — but extends it through multiple levels rather than a single volume, which is a more ambitious spatial and structural proposition. The evidence is self-reported with no post-occupancy social data or occupancy observation cited, so whether the vertical courtyard actually generates the encounter patterns a ground-level quad would is asserted on design logic. Research on atrium buildings suggests that visual connection is necessary but not sufficient — the quality of the spaces opening onto the void, the presence of dwell and dwelling-adjacent uses, and the ground-floor activation matter as much as the geometry. For a specifier on a tall education or workplace building, this is a worthwhile spatial idea that addresses a real social risk; it needs to be programmed and activated, not just designed, to deliver on its social intent.
#atrium #social space #wellbeing