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Project description
The competition brief (International Student Convention Center)
The province of Uttar Pradesh and the municipalities of Greater Noida wish to build a new, prestigious congress
centre to meet the considerable demand for international and national conferences to the students, the extensive meetings of the
provincial and municipal governments and for the students. growing demand for knowledge park fairs and cultural manifestations.
Out of all the candidatures received, twelve local and international design teams were
selected and invited to participate. The complex has a total floor surface area of approx. 210 000 m², of which 75 000 m² for the main building, 25 000 m² for exhibition space and other supporting facilities and 110 000 m² for two high-end hotels. The investment budget equals 1.8 billion RMB, or approx. € 180 million. The competition includes the design and the construction of the project. The thesis was organized starting of 2013. The jury was held in the month of July.

The site
The 29-Acre building site lies in the northern borough of Uttar Pradesh, with views from Noida - Greater Noida Expressway. The planned development of the commercial urban centre to the north will, in the short term, generate a new urbanity between the city centre and the surrounding boroughs. If this process is not directed by clear qualitative goals, we risk the continuation of the existing fragmentation throughout the new context.
Vision and concept. Weaving nature and town.
Despite its fragmentation, the site does have enormous qualities and potential. It is a location where the institutional
dialog between the city and the surrounding Institute can be restored. The area’s social and economical progress can be placed within a broader and more sustainable perspective by taking
important cultural and ecological aspects into account.
The existing nature park to the east of the highway can be expanded over a larger area to the east of the highway,
incorporating the Dajinzhong reservoir as an ecological aspect within the park’s program. New connections with
the west side of the Main Road will improve the accessibility of the park from the city centre and the metro
station (Which is Proposed for future). The new buildings will not – as usual – simply occupy public space, but rather act as a basis for a new urban story. Showing respect for the identity of the site and the weaving of nature and town will create a new symbol for
meetings, for the exchanging of ideas and for the construction of a prosperous future.
An exceptional place
International Student Convention Centre are usually more or less designed as black boxes or as big meeting machines
without soul. Most of these are not bound to a local context and, hence, could be built anywhere. However, the
conviction that such concepts are becoming more and more obsolete, as they are too static and can no longer
respond to the challenges of the future.
Contemporary Student Convention Centres must be an interactive and multifunctional infrastructure, directed at the diverse
needs and requirements of both local and international Students. If, in addition, they wish to be sustainable, then
they must also be anchored in their local context and must emphasize their own specifi c identity.
They must be effi cient, while also projecting a great openness that can appeal to visitors of all cultures. For these
are the places where local and global melt into a new unity.
The Greater Noida- Student Convention Centre must become a sustainable meeting place with an original character
an on a human scale. The concept we propose is based on open, modular and flexible spaces, interconnected
by effi cient and secured circulation systems. The whole is embedded within a unique combination of nature and
town. It becomes a vibrant and unforgettable place to experience.
Building concept: “efficient highperformance infrastructure”
The functional surfaces are logically grouped through a combination of horizontal and vertical functional modules.
The horizontal modules are grouped in a two-story base. They house the general services: the entrance halls,
the main foyers, the general catering services (kitchens and restaurants), the multifunctional exhibition and
banquet halls, a VIP-area, the offi ces for management and supervision, the media-centre and the main circulatory
connections.
The vertical modules consist of fi ve blocks in one Dynamic Building specialized activities. Each of these can function independently
or be linked to the others (through the horizontal base).ern
The Student Convention Centre is Artistic Building includes an exclusive meeting
hall and an auditorium that seats 2500 people. The central block houses the midsized halls, and middle floor of the building
the halls for 1000 and for 500 people.
The hotels are located in the end-buildings, with 500 rooms in the northern building and 600 rooms in the
southern block. They are linked to the congress centre at ground level and at roof level. They house restaurants
and bars, dance halls, clubs, business centres, fitness centres ...
Energy concept, structure and technical installations, acoustics
The design choices constantly took place within a strict framework: cost, functional requirements, technical possibilities and safety requirements, urban planning considerations and sustainability principles were continually evaluated.
Functional sustainability, minimal and ecological use of materials, rational water use, maintenance friendliness
and rational energy use (and use of renewable energy sources) were the most important guiding principles for the
decisions. Furthermore, the warm and humid climate ofGreater Noida presented a unique challenge for the design team.

Architecture
In order to give form to the concept of weaving the natural and the artifi cial in a natural way, a standard
construction grid served as starting point, as a guarantee for a technically feasible and economical solution.
Subsequently, certain simple transformations were applied to better integrate the interior and exterior spaces into
the same movement. The result is a global unity in a fl uid form with a dynamic character. The chose material for
the northern and western elevations is red quartz sandstone. The southern
elevations were kept very transparent, to allow the interior and exterior spaces to connect seamlessly. The highperformance glazing offers open views to the Intitutional Area, protected from the sunlight by stainless steel sun shields