Raised on a podium on the edge of a green meadow that serves as a cricket pitch, the Sultan Nazrin Shah Centre was designed in the manner of a theater in a garden. It had to engage not only with the parkland and nearby canals but also with the university’s existing buildings, and be a key piece in the development and improvement of that part of the campus. So the entrance is put on the southeast, and one comes in through the existing gatehouse at Worcester Place, where a new square marks the student complex and connects the project to the distinguished Sainsbury Building, completed in the 1980s by Richard MacCormac. After the pools of water at the entrance is a stone platform that welcomes visitors and ensures that flooding is channeled to an area under the complex. The foyer is also a viewing point and gives rise to a play of pergolas and terraces from which to watch sporting events. Here one can discern both the curve leading to the amphitheater and the corridor giving access to the dance studio and the other educational facilities. The large hall is framed by a stone screen that rises over the base to let light in through the clerestory, and which in the interior emphasizes its geometry through the pleated ceiling...[+]