The building is divided into different volumes that function autonomously, a decision that seeks to give the classrooms a highly relevant identity and at the same time generate spaces that are closer and more in keeping with the scales of the adjoining smaller buildings.
It is thus perceived as a work that is born of the addition of multiple pieces that articulate the project and avoids the construction of a single mass volume that would be aggressive.
In the interior there is a disappearance of the corridors, which means that the building itself folds up and creates completely open-plan workspaces that favour coworking.
The structure of the building is made of concrete with bi-directional slabs and to generate a continuity of material from the pre-existing buildings. Brick is used but through a system of permeable lattices that generate a play of light and serve as solar protection.
Description of project by Amann-Cánovas-Maruri
We had better not travel alone
Nor should this small lecture theatre, surrounded by other buildings and apparently inhospitable places but with great capacity to generate new opportunities.
The proposed building is articulated with the existing office building and extends it in a natural way, taking advantage of its location and its connections as one more arm of the existing ones, therefore, one more. On the other hand, it wants to relate to the open spaces of the campus, generating a place that can grow and amplify its uses.
The construction of the limits
The project proposes to define and shape the perimeter of the project and thus offer the city a front. The aim is to build an urban space seen not only from the university fabric but also from the places surrounding the university. The desire to break up the volumes and turn the classrooms into protagonists and give them a certain autonomy from each other allows the volume requested by the programme to be broken up in such a way that a smaller scale is manifested, also close to the residential buildings.
The strategy of occupying the limits permits opening up an interior space embraced by the new pavilions, a space that begins in the car parks, converted into a necessary forest, a forest that descends together with the students, who walk between the classrooms to the heart of the communal space, a covered space where the transits intertwine in the form of stairs that serve as a stage for life, greeting and looking at each other.
The back of the plot, with a great difference in level with the street, is also recovered by unifying the courtyard of the adjoining building and creating a platform for the sports court, which is no longer understood as a mere university infrastructure but allows the construction of a landscaped area that completes the public garden that is added to the campus.
In this way a broken building is designed that provides a favourable orientation configuration for all the classrooms and is not perceived as a great mass but as the sum of small pieces that articulate a route that ends in a spatially permeable place, a common place that connects two spaces on the campus and that turns this wedge into an unashamedly green space.
The interior therefore aims to become a set of classrooms that have the capacity for transformation, with versatile organisational structures and informal growths that resolve new forms of teaching and that need spaces that can be transformed and that know how to accommodate diverse organisations.
This simple strategy of polyvalence has complex and timely consequences on teaching, which can open up to the common space, increase the number of participants, organise major events and allow the classroom to cease to be a closed capsule where content is taught and become a place for work, exchange and interaction between the different academic agents.
The disappearance of the corridor
There are no corridors in the lecture hall; the project folds and breaks up the classrooms in order to generate work and coworking spaces that at two high points become double-height places and real forums for academic work.
The roof and the commonplace
The roof is not a wasted space. Taking advantage of the creation of a green roof and a good placement of the machines, it is proposed to use this surface to create a place for meeting, working and resting outside the classroom. The simple placement of tables and chairs will allow students to meet with enough space to organise half a basketball court or a coordination meeting for the work of a subject.
The car and the pedestrian
The disappearance of the orthodox car park makes it possible to generate a garden that creates a diverse and complex public space following the model of participatory forum, work and interaction. The areas of the forest favour different forms of academic dialogue: close, assembly, festive... Thus, the campus becomes the union of the different forms of student relationships, providing them with a place to work, rest, develop projects, listen to a concert or organise a fair.
Construction
The building is constructed with an orthodox concrete structure with bi-directional slabs, its exterior configuration aims to generate continuity with the existing campus and therefore uses brick, tinged with permeable lattices that protect from the sun in the most unfavourable orientations, it is therefore a construction that values the context and its built continuity.
Passivity
The thermal passivity systems have to do with the inertia of the materials and their layout, avoiding direct sunshine and, thanks to the width of the bays, providing a system of cross ventilation that resolves the excess heat in the harshest seasonal periods. This damping is also produced by the incorporation of vegetation into the project, which will contribute extensively to the thermal balance of the building. This way of acting with the vegetation turns the campus into a lung that should be extended to other spaces excessively taken up by cars.
