The Spanish architect Jorge Losada, not only works as a teacher at the Peruvian University of Piura, he has also designed this architecture workshop for its campus. Facing a radical climate with a very tight budget, he has built a simple pavilion, but that is implanted with force in the desert, offering possibilities to an inhospitable terrain.
Description of the project by Jorge Losada
Piura is located in the Sechura desert, a city surrounded by sand dunes. The river, which evaporates before reaching the sea, just generates a small green corridor. In this difficult context, the University of Piura has got a hundred hectares reforested with a dry forest, an oasis of carob trees in which to implement its facilities.
The architecture workshop tries to cope with these extreme conditions through two strategies: creating a large shadow and a ventilated space. They avoid the massive architecture that accumulates heat and is either uncomfortable and requires air conditioning, involving an unaffordable energy waste.
They opted for a steel frame and a steel plate roof whose height ranges from 6 to 9 meters. Under this membrane (3 vaults of 12x21m), ther is a large air cushion that is renewed with the slightest breeze to dissipate the roof’s radiation. A second roof, made of plywood boards painted in white and hung of the structure, prevents from radiation and limits the space. With room for up to 120 architecture tables, the workshop is open to the landscape by a 36 meters and 3 meters high long rip. An horizontal framework that responds to the equally horizontal component of the carob forest in which it is inserted.
The longitudinal axis of the workshop is oriented east-west to open to the south, from where the prevailing winds blow. The roof covers four meters over the slab to avoid direct sun light that, at this latitude, comes from both the north and the south. In the interstitial spaces, there will be plant species adapted to the climate that will help curb the sand particles in suspension that could drag the wind and to ward off insects.
The facade, like everything else, barely exists. A metal net subtly veils the landscape and prevents from the entrance of big animals. The limit disappears and you get the feeling of work directly in the forest, under a shade and with a pleasant thermal sensation. At the top, after passing an horizontal gutter which assumes the torrential rains that eventually hit the region, the enclosure is a mesh of tensioned fisherman nets. In short, the Architecture Workshop encloses a space in the desert and responds to the context using the possibilities of the program. Paraphrasing Koolhaas, where there is nothing, the project of the workshop tries to make everything possible.
CREDITS. DATA SHEET.-
Architect.- Jorge Losada.
Collaborators.- Lola Rodríguez and Carlos Berián.
Location.- University of Piura, Piura (Perú).
Date.- 2015 (finalisation).
Client.- Piura University.
