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Anatolia College Feasibility Study

Thessaloniki, Greece

º£½ÇÊÓƵ delivered a feasibility study to support Anatolia College to develop its aspirations to reshape and transform its historic campus to meet modern needs.

Established in 1886, Anatolia College is celebrated as one of Greece’s most distinguished educational establishments. The private, non-profit organisation, which caters to all levels of education, has identified a need for a future vision that will enhance the student experience, better reflect its preeminent academic reputation (both nationally and internationally) and allow significant expansion of the student population at its tertiary division, ACT – The American College of Thessaloniki.

We supported the development of a masterplan to transform Anatolia College’s campus and optimise the wellness, sustainability and adaptability.

We worked closely with the wider design team to assess the feasibility of the plan, providing specific insight around building services engineering, sustainability and transport.

The plan supports staff and student wellbeing, and delivers sustainable spaces that will be resilient in the face of future risks as a consequence of climate change.

Our resilience strategies targeted aspects such as shading, water management and biodiversity net gain.

Challenge

We worked closely with lead architect Bennetts Associates and the wider design team to assess the feasibility of the plan, providing specific insight around building services engineering (MEP), and transport and mobility.

Key objectives included future-proofing educational space for students and staff, cherishing the local heritage, further embedding sustainability throughout the campus, celebrating nature and improving key functional aspects of the estate.

Our teams played a key role in identifying issues across the site that would need to be addressed and ensuring that the masterplan fully answered the existing challenges faced by the campus’ staff and students.

One of the key challenges would be developing an integrated masterplan for a campus that covers everything from primary age to higher education facilities. It would need to actively support staff and student wellbeing, and deliver sustainable spaces that would be fully resilient, adapted and robust in the face of future climate change risks.

Solution

The plan aims to unify the site through a sensory and experiential journey. It will include significant additions such as new entrances, reworked ‘heartspace’ quads, an expansion of natural elements, a new rooftop events space offering panoramic sea and mountain views, and a state-of-the-art 600-seat auditorium.

Our transport and mobility experts examined the road junctions throughout the site and made a series of recommendation for how the reshaping of the campus could play a part in making the environment safer. We also looked at how the siting of bus stops would be critical in the efficient distribution of students to the right parts of the site. Ensuring highly efficient public transport services would be critical in supporting the college to achieve its vision of a car-free campus, with micro-mobility around the campus via electric scooters.

º£½ÇÊÓƵ’s sustainability experts concentrated on ensuring the masterplan aligned with Anatolia College’s sustainability goals and delivered an impactful transformation. This included assessing energy usage across the site and looking at ways this could be adapted to lower the operational carbon of the campus, and how performance of systems could be fully optimised. There was also a key focus on placemaking and enhancing the staff and student experience, concentrating on wellness and benchmarking against the world’s best performing educational campuses. We also looked at how the transformation could also add value for the wider community.

Another key theme that was explored was resilience – ensuring the campus is fully optimised to face the evolving challenges of climate change. This included a particular focus on both flood and wildfire risks across the next 80 years. We worked closely with the landscape design architect to ensure water management is taken into consideration throughout the site and biodiversity is enhanced with local species supported. Shading strategies and materiality were also carefully considered to guard against the heat island effect and ensure a comfortably walkable campus.

Beyond the masterplan strategies, our experts supported the client and architect with an assessment of key building assets. Smart energy buildings, net zero carbon technologies, and passive design strategies were applied to the development of a new guidelines document to steer any future developments across the site.

Value

Our multidisciplinary team liaised closely with a range of stakeholders from across the college to fully understand the needs and aspirations of all the site’s different users. We collaborated closely with both the lead architect and the wider design team to ensure the masterplan fully reflects these requirements and visions for a successful campus transformation.

The sustainability framework, targets and KPIs were tailored to the Anatolia’s aspirations, in line with international best practice certification schemes, as well as placemaking considerations.

Transportation rearrangements will allow the site to be car-free, massively improving the quality of the outdoor space and enhancing staff and student wellbeing.

The college has been at the heart of life in Thessaloniki for more than a century, with the campus growing organically over the decades. As a design team, we worked together to develop a rational masterplan that exemplifies both architectural flair and sustainable engineering solutions to ensure Anatolia College will continue to flourish and grow and remain at the forefront of the world’s leading educational establishments in the years to come.