Urban Campus in A Coruña, Spain

The aim of this project is to review the current urban model through the construction of a modern center that brings knowledge back to the urban center generating a mix of uses in the city and which location reduces mobility needs of citizens and breaks the boundaries between different disciplines and the borders between scientific community and society.

The way universities have been managed so far has favoured the isolation of subjects and confined research groups into them, rarely formed by experts in different disciplines. These disciplinary borders impede the collaboration of researchers from diverse fields whose joint work can have a direct application in the contemporary global world. To tackle this issue, I propose an open and interconnected research centre which laboratories are arranged in boxes of different sizes according to their requirements, floating without touching each other while in their interstices large sliding glass doors close and open other spaces at its users will. On the contrary to a large immediate foyer, there is a large fragmented space, never fully apprehensible. The different boxes take position at the same time that a great staircase winds between them, refusing to their usual condition of service and fostering relationship between researchers. Openings are made to the laboratories so vision can go through several spaces before introducing the surrounding environment into the building. The atrium is wrapped with a double skin of slightly matted glass, which allows sunlight to reach even the ground floor. However the ground floor is open and transparent in order to introduce public space into the building and extend interior activities to the city. An equipped wall, made of concrete, rests on the neighbour building, containing the service spaces. Every building element rest on a one meter grid so façade, carpentry, walls, pavements, technical ceilings MEP and HVAC services respond to a single module, making the construction process easier while providing a great spatial complexity. The resulting lightness of the building is not only material but a consequence of its conceptual lightness. In their will to embrace public space between them, laboratories move away creating unlimited possibilities for new relationships between citizens.