Architects’ award-winning redesign of University of Hong Kong medical school lobby throws away convention

Think of a university lobby and what comes to mind? The duo behind Atelier Nuno asked themselves that question – then put aside convention. The foyer they designed for the University of Hong Kong’s medical school underscores how innovation and style can convey learning and prestige. The stars of the show are everyday materials used in unusual ways.

White perforated aluminium panels draped from the ceiling repeat the curves of sculptural walls that set off a timber-clad stepped platform staircase. From large windows, sunlight filters through the minuscule holes overhead and lends warmth to an airy, uplifting environment. The visual impact is so compelling that the project recently won World Architecture Community’s WA Awards 10+5+X for interior design.

“[In Hong Kong] there’s a lot of importance placed on retail and hospitality spaces, while everyday places like schools or clinics are overlooked,” says Nuno Da Silva Tang, the Hong Kong-born Canadian architect who co-founded the studio in 2017 with French architect Maxime Decaudin.

Breaking the cookie-cutter mould for educational institutions, they believe, won them HKU’s contest to revamp the lobby of the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, previously a sombre space featuring granite. “We broke the compartmentalisation typical of these spaces,” says Decaudin, who brings a research-based, conceptual approach to their work.

“When you build a building, you think about the relationship between light, context, and landscape, says Da Silva Tang. “Good architecture talks about those relationships, [and] even within interiors, our approach is to investigate those relationships and ask how architecture can exist in interior spaces.