"Tree of Life" was updated on Architizer

Led by Liu Haowei and his team at CAA Architects, the new CAFA Qingdao Campus for the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) and Qingdao Kechuang Investment Development Group uses rhythmic lines to create an organic living body that interacts with the bay area and wider ocean.

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 spaces 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 a 135,000 square-meter site on the South Bank of the West Coast New Area of Qingdao and has a unique geographical location in the wilderness, 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 rhythmic lines to draw the outlines of the building and construct an organic living body, creating a dialogue with the Art Bay area and the wider ocean environment, maintaining the coexistence of artistic freedom and rationality in creation.

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

The space of the courtyard is constantly divided like a cell.

Each ring 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, forming 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.

Haowei’s 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 were applied to the planning, which initiate CAFA’s exploring of a new model of innovative education, independent scientific research, social service, and cultural inheritance.