The new Faculty of Fine Arts is located in a heterogeneous area, adjacent to the island highway and on the periphery of the University Campus. Our main challenge was to create a link between the new faculty building and its surroundings by working with the open public spaces and to increase the synergies between the academic complex and its urban context.
The new building presents itself as an extension of the Campus’s public space, while creating an autonomous interior landscape of its own. A skin of suspended concrete slats adopts a curved shape which develops on the different levels protecting and wrapping the open space of the building.
Campus circulation is collected and guided by a public plaza that extends through the building’s main entrance and is transformed into a spacious terrace overlooking the inner courtyard. From the main entrance, circulation is continuous, following half-open, undulating corridors.
The teaching areas are distributed along a continuous band accompanying the open corridors and dispose of mobile dividing walls that allow for creating classrooms of different sizes or even opening up the whole floor, depending on the needs. Adding to this flexibility in use are multiple spaces 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 ground-breaking, innovative spaces for experimental and creative education of future students of visual arts.
Project
Faculty of Fine Arts, University of La Laguna
Situation
Campus de Guajara, La Laguna, Tenerife. Canary Islands, Spain
Architects
GPY Arquitectos
Project Team
Juan Antonio González Pérez, Urbano Yanes Tuña, Constanze Sixt, José Juan Aguilar Ramos, Attenya Campos de Armas, Carhel Chaves, Michel Correa Dos Ramos, Raquel Guanche García, María Elena Lacruz Alvira, Juan Luis Marichal Hernández, Vanessa Mayato Antón, José Luis Novo Gómez, Laura Pérez Rodríguez, Michela Pestoni, Alessandro Preda, Rubén Servando Carrillo, Gabriel Walti
Technical Team
Luis Darias Martín (Asat), Héctor González Niebla (Asat), Juan Luis Marichal Hernández, José Ángel Yanes Tuña Structural Engineers Fhecor Ingenieros Consultores
Civil Engineers
Gpi Ingenieros
Geotechnical Engineers
Servicio de Ingeniería del Terreno (ULPGC)
Landscaping
Poa Jardinería
Technical Drawings
Miriam Hernández Pérez
Client
Universidad de La Laguna
Contract
UTE Edificio Bellas Artes
Constructed Surface
32.260 m2
Models
Katarzyna Billik, José Luis González Doña, Andrzej Gwizdala
Photographs
Roland Halbe, José Ramón Oller, Filippo Poli
Awards
Premio de Arquitectura del Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Tenerife, La Gomera y El Hierro ‘Manuel de Oraá y Arcocha’ (2008/2017): Prize | German Design Award, 2017: Winner | Architizer A+ Awards, 2016: Special Mention | German Design Council Iconic Awards, 2015: Best of Best | Chicago Athenaeum International Architecture Awards, 2015: Winner | WAF World Architecture Festival, 2010. Shortlisted (Future Projects: Education)
Publications
Books: Primer Premio de Arquitectura del Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Tenerife, La Gomera y El Hierro Manuel de Oraá y Arcocha 08/17 (catalogue). Tenerife: Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Tenerife, La Gomera y El Hierro, 2019. Mas Llorens, V., Ferrer Ribera, C. and Reig Alberola, I. (ed.): Materia y Forma VI (catalogue). Valencia: General Ediciones de Arquitectura, 2013. Lan, Bruce Q. (ed.): Arch Manual. Design + Concept + Script + Process. Beijing: AADCU, 2010. Magazines: Exé n.18 (2014/15), Frame n.101 (2014), The Plan n.79 (2014), Mark n.53 (2014/15), Platform n.7 (2016)
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