Faculty of Fine Arts, University of La Laguna, by gpy arquitectos

Description of project by gpy arquitectos

Located in a heterogeneous area, on the periphery of the University Campus and adjacent to the island highway, the new Faculty of Fine Arts building wraps itself around an intimate open space, creating an interior landscape. A skin of suspended concrete slats adopts a curved shape which develops on the different levels, protecting and wrapping the interior open space of the building. The skin manifests a dual vocation of scale, housing the teaching areas while at the same time defining the building's urban and territorial image.

A public plaza collects and guides campus circulation. It extends through the building's main entrance, which takes the form of a large opening in its facade, and is transformed into a spacious terrace overlooking the inner courtyard. From the main entrance, circulation is continuous, following half-open, undulating corridors.

Our main focus was to ensure flexibility in the teaching areas, which are distributed along a continuous band and use mobile dividing walls to create separate classrooms or open up the whole floor, depending on the needs.

This working and teaching space is grouped around a ring of fixed installations located on the inner sides, placing the fixed elements in such a way that they do not interfere in any possible transformations.

The project of the Faculty of Fine Arts is predominated by reinforced concrete that forms the skin of horizontal elements which function as the exterior filter, and a continuous skin by cast glass that defines a translucent closure leading throughout the building, separating the spaces of specific uses from the common ones like the patio-gardens and open ramps, the covered galleries and the entrance terrace, conceived as open exhibition and teaching areas and places for social exchange.

We like to see the new Faculty of Fine Arts as a building that offers possibilities for experimental and creative education, as an innovative, collaborative and productive space that provokes new images and offers ground-breaking spaces for future students of visual arts.