University Campus Phase I, Segovia, Spain

Competition 2005. 1st prize

The project comes from a bidding in 2005 that was an initiative of the University of Valladolid. It involved the construction of a university campus in Segovia, the objective of which was to bring together into a single campus various faculties that were disseminated throughout the city.

The plot has an approximate area of 15,000 m2, which in the project is divided in two by a street that traverses it perpendicularly. This makes it possible to organize two zones inside the campus: the first phase, intended to have a library, common classrooms and a parking lot, of approximately 20,000 m2, and a second phase, for the faculty offices, the vice-chancellor’s office and an auditorium, of approximately 12,000 m2; the first phase corresponds to the building already finished. The first phase includes the construction of a wide covered public space, extension of the urban scene, at the service of the university community and of the citizens being a place for meetings, events and celebrations. In this space there is a library, formed by three wooden chests, each hanging from a baldachin, the structures of which allow for the transparency of the space.

It is a place full of life and activities that can be traversed through stairs and walkways. In contrast with this space, there is a quieter pit located at its center, accessible through ramps, providing access to the library. The outside the building integrates smoothly to the urban scene through a fragmentation of the volumes that comes into contrast with the rotundity of the scale of the interior space. A continuity has been stablished between the interior and exterior materials, which gives the interior space the feel of a covered exterior space.

Authors: Linazasoro&Sánchez Arquitectura
Collaborators: Hugo Sebastián de Erice, Sergi Artola, Rafael Rodríguez