KPMB earns Learning Space of the Year Award from FRAME

November 11, 2025

The Duan Family Center for Computing & Data Sciences is FRAME’s “Learning Space of the Year” for 2025.  

Earlier this week in Amsterdam, following grand jury deliberations, our 19-storey building for Boston University was named the winner of the 2025 FRAME Award in the Learning Space category. 

As FRAME’s editors noted, “This year’s honorees reveal a design community grappling with pressing questions, [including] how do we create spaces that nurture community without sacrificing individuality?”  

The Duan Center, located on a compact urban site near Boston’s Charles River, unites 3,000 students, faculty, and staff in a single building devoted to teaching, research, and study. Its cantilevered volumes rotate around a central core, offering departments their own distinctive identities along with a five-storey atrium, interconnected stairs, and a network of shared spaces.  

This year’s award winners were chosen by FRAME’s grand jury from a shortlist of five projects that earned the highest scores from rotating monthly juries. Competing projects were evaluated for innovation, functionality, creativity, and eco-social impact.  

“Against the iconic, Jenga exterior, the [Duan Center’s] internal learning spaces deploy a contrasting but no less dynamic formal parti — a fluid and continuous vertical commons, guiding users and forming connections between them as well as between inside and outside,” remarked juror Holger Kehne, founding partner at Plasma Studio. “The use of seating steps mediates across levels, sets up vistas, and activates users to look around and explore.”  

The Duan Center is the first LEED Platinum building at Boston University and the largest operationally fossil fuel-free building in all of Boston. 

The building has received a range of international design accolades, including a Green GOOD Design Award, an American Architecture Award, a New England Architecture Award, a Best of Design Award from The Architect’s Newspaper, an Award of Excellence from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitats, a Best of Year Award from Interior Design, an Award of Merit from Canadian Architect, and an A+ Award from Architizer. 

Learn more about the Duan Center.