“Blue Tape” by architecture graduates Evan Shieh and Ali Chen is the 1st-prize winner of the Dubai Architecture School Tower competition. In the single-phase ideas competition, participants had to design an architecture school tower whose environment would play a vital role in the students’ education, as well as make an iconic addition to Dubai’s skyline.

Blue Tape – school tower is a vertical re-imagining of the typical architecture school typology. Located adjacent to the American University of Dubai and publicly integrated with the Dubai metro system, the tower campus houses an international architecture program offering students opportunity to pursue a modern architectural education within an iconic landmark of the Dubai skyline.

At the core of Blue Tape is the concept of the Pin-Up Space – a place where students share their ideas, while collaborating with their peers and participating in academic critique of their designs with instructors and colleagues. The tower re-defines the Pin-Up space as the integral and vital tool of the architectural education and recognizes that in many examples of current schools it is often pushed to the margins of physical space.

Placed within the tower typology, the typically horizontal space becomes vertical, forming a visual, physical and conceptual epicenter for the tower. As one moves upward, the Pin-Up space forms the conceptual spine of larger public programs – classrooms, workshops, an auditorium, a library, event and gallery spaces, and finally culminates in an outdoor roof terrace. These public programs become conceptual extensions of the Pin-Up spine, expressed on the façade of the tower as formal voids, representing a symbolic and public expression of a continuous space of academia.