Bringing the university closer to the city with sustainable criteria. Berbés UVigo by Abalo Alonso Arquitectos

Description of project by Abalo Alonso Arquitectos

The University of Vigo, whose main campus is 10km from the city centre, proposes the rehabilitation of three buildings in the historic centre to bring its activity closer to the rest of society.

A wooden volume rests on the stone arcades, the only existing remains, with part of the façades and party walls, of the previous constructions. A box within a box; wood and stone. In this case, the wooden box is made entirely of wood; structure and construction included. But with contemporary industrialized systems, optimize the use of the material and its temporary response. We are inspired by shipbuilding, but we incorporate the latest advances available in R&D, as befits the purpose of the building we intend to develop.
 
The choice of material and its construction system allows us to integrate into the local tradition without renouncing a certain dose of contemporaneity. On the west elevation, we restored the stone arcades and the parts of the façade made of the same material that is still preserved. The arches serve as support for the new construction, whose foundations are completed with micro-piling in the central area, slabs on part of the perimeter, and rock directly at the back. Before the successive fillings of the port, we were here on the edge of the sea, so geologically the terrain is complex.

We used three criteria for intervention on the facades, depending on the original constructions. The northernmost façade is reconfigured, reusing its stones, to adapt a previous mezzanine, particularly the lower one. The central one is reinforced and completed with a new stone cornice similar to the existing one. And in the third, the rendering with inserted tiles is more delicately restored.

The height permitted by the special plan is completed with a lattice of laminated wood pillars that integrates structure, solar protection, and image in a single element, with the verticality suggested by the regulations and the imprint of an institutional building such as the one in question. The east façade, embedded between the small squares, courtyards, and interior alleyways, is resolved similarly, somewhat lighter due to the reduction of the solar impact.

The volumetry envisaged in the regulations is exhausted, finishing off the complex with three longitudinal four-slope zinc roofs, perforated in the central area with two skylights that flood the interior with north light. The structure of these roofs is made of laminated timber purlins in two rows. To avoid the appearance of tensors in the central area which, due to their number, would almost give the impression of a continuous false ceiling, the party walls of laminated timber are reinforced with buttresses of the same material, placed on the outside, taking advantage of the thinning of the original stone walls on one side and the courtyard on the other.

The floor slabs are also made of cross-laminated timber, compact technical flooring, and floating PVC flooring. They are completed in certain areas with semi-direct acoustic ceilings. The original heights, which the special plan preserves, are more typical of housing than of an office building, so we avoided as far as possible the appearance of false ceilings, leaving the installations visible or placing them in the existing openings in the party walls.
 
A central open route links the arcades with the first floor via concrete steps to continue with two flights of free-standing wooden stairs that combine the geometries of the site. A flexible functional program with work, meetings, exhibitions, information, or teaching spaces, distributed over the different levels. Of the old plot, the footprint of which has been preserved, the smallest volume contains the server spaces: a protected staircase, toilets, ducts, and installations, but also a closed meeting room on each of the upper floors. The rest is distributed in the other two volumes, with an institutional area on the main façade of the first floor and some classrooms already configured on the second floor.