Westlake University

The Yungu Campus of Westlake University, situated in Hangzhou's Xihu District, occupies a plot area of 900,000 square meters with a gross floor area of 913,000 square meters. The campus is organized in concentric circles, with the teaching and research areas at the core and a front square, a living area, and a sports area surrounding them. A circular water system is integrated into the design to connect the natural, academic, and living loops organically. The campus is master planned in a holistic manner and built in two phases. The first phase covers a land area of around 422,666 square meters and a total construction area of 456,000 square meters, including an academic research island, a front square cluster, a living area cluster for students and faculty, and apartments for temporary use by chair professors. Despite the large scale and complicated functions, the first phase of Westlake University's Yungu Campus was designed and constructed in about four years, including two years amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The Architectural Design and Research Institute of Zhejiang University (UAD) mainly managed the entire design process and achieved innovation in various aspects, such as high-standard design, high-quality construction, and high-efficiency operation and maintenance. A romantic ecological "Water Loop" The master planning incorporates the existing rich water resources on the site and, through boundary optimization, creates a Water Loop that divides the campus into two functional areas: the central academic research area on the island and the living facility area off the island. The Water Loop serves as a versatile landscape belt that encompasses public platforms, communication areas, and landscape elements on both sides. It functions as a main axis to connect all functional structures such as the main research and teaching buildings, thereby serving as a dynamic unifying force for the campus. It represents the heart of the master plan, and its presence helps to mitigate the impact of vehicle-induced ground vibrations, which occur on the road surface outside the Loop, on the highly-sensitive laboratory equipment on the academic research island. In the first phase, the buildings constructed on the academic research island are arranged in an anti-clockwise manner around the auditorium that serves as the central point. Those buildings include the Laboratory Animal Center, the Basic Medical Science Building, the Life Science Building, the Science Building, and the Engineering Building. The second phase will entail the construction of three individual buildings: a scientific research center, a teaching center, and a library center. Once completed, these structures will complete the academic research island. The design team preserved the natural flowing direction of the water system on the site while readjusting the shoreline to create a complete water loop from the previously irregular water system. They implemented water treatment measures based on a principle that combined the construction of a water circulation system and the restoration of the water ecological system, to increase biodiversity and maintain a high water transparency. The Water Loop also functions as a water detention facility similar to that of a Sponge City, contributing to the improvement of the campus's ecology. A sophisticated Academic Loop The Academic Loop in the campus's core area is the largest single scientific research complex in domestic universities, which can accommodate 300 principal investigators of various disciplines and 4 public experimental platforms upon completion. During the design process, the design team had multiple face-to-face meetings with every principal investigator to ensure that the project is available for scientific research once completed. 8x9.