Suzhou's Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University's new Central Building sits on a grassy plinth, a big horizontally stratified cube with big random holes punched into it. Designed by Andy Wen, Global Design Principal of Aedas, his scheme is a single building for the four university activities of administration, student activities, library and training.There had been an eight way competition for the project and most of his rivals had opted for three or four separate buildings. Wen's 60,000 sq m has the student activities in a spreading bermed ground zone on two levels serving as a plinth for the cube which contained the other activities. These are arranged in a quite complicated interlinking of spaces with the chief administrator's office on one half of the top floor and the library on several floors below.The cube is penetrated by a series of voids which serve to differentiate and define the internal functions. They also provide light to offices and shape and condition the air as it moves in and up through the voids. They are arranged so that there are none on the north-west elevation because that is the prevailing cold wind during winter. On the opposite side is a long slot halfway down the façade designed to harness the prevailing summer wind, sucking it up through the centre of the building and out through the garden on the roof.The first layer of cladding is glass. This is apparent when the outer shell of close-set horizontal sun shades is cut away either to reveal a hole through the building or when it is cut back as part of the outer skin's own design pattern, to reveal the glazing behind. The edges of these cutaways are lined with aluminium in a way which the architect compares with the thick rind of a watermelon. They merge with the autumn-red half metre square zinc sheets which line the swooping internal surfaces of the voids.The horizontal sun shades are fixed laterally and broken into random strata in a way which referenced the tradition of dry stone construction. It is only close up that the actual materials are recognisable.The design concept grew from an appreciation of the old city's formal landscapes especially one of their essential decorative ingredients, the so called scholar stones. These are heavily weathered local limestone pieces sometimes of considerable size whose uneven erosion has resulted in holes and crevices – a kind of found natural sculpture which can be enhanced by judiciously cutting the stone to reveal extra voids. For centuries these have been dug up and creatively cut on the many islands of Suzhou's vast Taihu lake and used as essential elements in the famed Suzhou gardens.Wen says,' Outside the building suggests the sternness of academia. And there is the idea of passive sustainability and the diagram of the wind passing through the building is a paradigm of the flow of learning.'