The environmentally-led design of this University campus by Arup Associates encourages an open and free exchange of ideas across disciplines. The BREEAM ‘Excellent’ building emphasises the learning experience, focusing on how people would experience the building. In one zone, floating podular spaces known as ‘the planets’ hang from structural steelwork, giving students the chance to experience the forces at work on a practical level. Meanwhile, exposed services are closely coordinated into electrical, mechanical and public health zones so that students can follow their path around the building. Proportion and mathematical beauty used in architecture since antiquity were applied through pure geometry. The biggest challenge was generating a footprint that would result in a total floor area of 14,000m2. The final geometry has a perfect square as the footprint’s outer boundary, while the inner boundary creates a perfect Ptolemy’s quadrilateral and with all primary line intersections being perfect harmonic ratios. Encouraging and celebrating students’ commitment to engineering, the building is brave and innovative. The potential of every element in its concrete frame has been maximised to produce a raw, robust and dramatic structure. The faculty building was completed in August 2012 and officially opened in February 2013. (All images copyright Simon Kennedy, London Architectural Photographer)