INCHIOSTRO - New Places for Learning

INCHIOSTRO

NEW PLACES FOR LEARNING

Marco Atzori - Originally published in C3 n°310 1006

The architecture of places of knowledge was radically modified in the last two decades. In relation to changes that transformed our society, universities, art schools, music academies or scientific research centers evolved whether in their teaching models or in their role vis-à-vis other social and economic factors; consequently, their architecture change. 

It is not anymore conceivable that isolated study and research places, such as the university, the school, the campus, would stay as an “ivory tower” uninfluenced by external mutations. A series of social and economic factors that allow the survival of these places and their continuous close relationships with the world of production leads university and artistic learning centers to reinvent their own identity and setting in order to become better places for growth and living.

The selected projects highlight a series of typological characteristics or linguistic choices that represent the evolution and changes that characterize some of the recent buildings constructed to accommodate prestigious scholastic institutions, university buildings or interconnected services. Together, these projects offer a representational panorama of the transformation of architectural language in places of knowledge.

Under the typological profile, a complex relationship could be observed between the spatial dynamics, on the one hand, that are generated by the functional program, as it refers to an introverted space with focal centers located inside the building for communication and distribution systems, or internal patios for climatic and light control, and on the other hand, the necessity to explicitly highlight the presence of the institution in a specific context to which the place belongs.

The search for an image that is identifiable by its architectural object, the production of urban landmarks has been for some years a linguistic search engine that tends to affirm the unity and originality of the single architectural object. After the Guggenheim in Bilbao, it became a fact that original and unique buildings, capable of representing themselves as an event in their urban context, lead to success to their corresponding institutions. This conviction lead these institutions to launch prestigious competitions or invest in projects that produces trademarks that are identifiable through architecture. The process was diffused in almost all institutions that represent the contemporary society even the prestigious scholastic places and universities.

In some of the analyzed projects, the intention to communicate and render visible the presence of these buildings, with a similar logic to that of shopping, as Rem Koolhaas reckons, creates design dynamics for which the public space or the image ranks first. Communication areas between the building and the city is privileged so that they seduce and invite the public user to discover what can be offered.

Not all projects adhere to this seductive logic but, they concentrate, within their internal space and relations, and construct, through the development of their functional program, spatial richness and complexity. One could then observe that when buildings privilege not-very-permeable masses and volumetric compositions, the buildings’ inside becomes a complex construction of private areas and a complex space of relations. The buildings are developed around large voids that construct a porous internal structure. The large masses perceived from the outside are revealed as skins of urban structures that wrap their own inside and voids, the spaces of internal communication become places of relations and socialization: an introverted universe.

The observation of projects is developed starting from the reading of these stratifications and the dynamics that occur between the tendency to develop internal spatiality and projections towards the outside as they can construct a reading framework that codifies their role within social contexts to which they belong.

In the enlargement project of the Juilliard School, Diller Scofidio+Renfro propose a complex re-use and enlargement of the existing Pietro Bulleschi building. The research on transparency and the deep implications that exist between the actual society and the media world developed by the studio of New York¹ lead to an intervention that adds to the brutalistic material of the original building a transparency similarly brutall whereas circulation systems and public spaces inside the institute are projected towards the outside through the use of a glazed façade that exposes itself to the main street.

The mise-en-scéne of the internal public space can let us think, at the first stance, of an attractive logic for which, throughout its own exposition, the cultural institution is rendered yet more evident in the urban context and, with a quasi commercial logic, it advertizes itself.

This interpretation becomes a common reading code to the first group of projects that are analyzed herein and that re-utters what has already been affirmed in relation to the role that the educational and cultural institutions assume within their contexts and Western societies.

The construction of similar public-cum-private spaces, buffers between the uncontrolled street space and the building private space, adopting the role of relational space between the outside and the inside. This occurs through covered public squares, as in large shopping malls, raising questions on the role of contemporary public spaces and on the values that our society attribute to places of relations, controlled and controllable places, where the experience of these places is more secure, less risky compared to what could happen in open space, in a space elsewhere.

Places in which activities with a social character take place should be protected, spaces in which one would meet likes and not confront the different others. At the same time, they are places in which the actual society exposes itself, just like what occurs in the enlargement of the Juilliard School.

The mass and volumetric composition characterizes the Luigi Bocconi University Main Building designed by Grafton Architects in Milan. Some similarities to what was previously analyzed could be noted in the building of Diller Scofidio e Renfro. The massive building composition relates to the brutalist building of Pietro Bulleschi with whom Diller Scofidio e Renfro dialogue, where the building of Grafton Architects seems to represent a contemporary interpretation. Moreover, a similar approach could be observed in the projection of inside public activities towards the outside; the architects observe that: “The northern edge...becomes the architectural opportunity to have a ‘window’ to Milan, a memorable image to confirm the important cultural contribution that the Bocconi University plays in the life of this city. For this reason, the public space of the aula magna (Magna Hall) occupies this frontage, asserting a symbolic presence and a register of the prestigious status of the University.”

The development of the relationship between the urban context and the educational institutions seems to be revolutionized, comparing what occurs in the extension of the Juilliard School to the Music school in Lisbon designed by João Luis Carrilho da Graça. In the school of the Portuguese architect mass and volume does not seem to very permeable as the building develops a complex relationship with its terrain through a large internal patio which becomes a space for live performances and outdoor concerts.

If we observe closely, this patio, which size is significantly large (around 400 sqm), we could notice that it has a similar role to what was proposed by Diller Scofidio and Renfro in the Juilliard and by Grafton Architects in the Luigi Bocconi University in creating an intermediate place, a public-cum-pivate space, in which the school faces the city, and highlights its own existence through orchestration that goes beyond the building itself.

The idea of the patio, as a relational element, reoccurs also in the project designed by TALLERDEARQUITECTURA for the School of Plastic Arts in Oaxaca, Benito Juarez Autonomous University. The use of the patio, in this case, establishes an internal-cum-external spatial sequence that defines the intervention as a system rather than a separate object. This allows the construction of a relationship with the landscape, at different scales, in which the building dissolves, also due to the creation of a natural relief that surrounds the building and limits the perception of heights. Compared to other examples analyzed herein, the School of Plastic Arts is considered as an exception, whether for its different scale of intervention, for its language or its approach. In this sense, it is closer to an experience witnessed in the 1960s by the Team X and particularly by Candilis, Josic and Woods as regards the theories they developed, the Free University of Berlin that they designed, and the classification of this building in the Mat-building category, as described by Alison Smithson in his “How to recognize a Mat Building”².

Both buildings, the one designed by Carrilho da Graça and the mini-campus designed by TALLERDEARQUITECTURA, adopt a language with modern elements influenced by the local conditions, especially by climatic factors and sun-related building orientation.

With the exception of the School of Plastic Arts, the construction of the building space analyzed herein has an introverted dynamic. The use of spaces of relation with the outside derive from the relation that is created between the institution and the city, as it occurs in the Juilliard and the Bocconi University where the development of space is generally based on the sequence of internal voids. In the Bocconi University designed by Grafton Architects, the large circulation space and the surrounding voids become foci around which spatial and functional sequences are developed. The same scheme is evident in the extension of the Vitus Bering Innovation Park and Horsens by C. F. Møller Architects in which the system of connections among functions is developed vertically around a large central void that becomes the perceptive and compositional building fulcrum that is developed from building base to cover, allowing a dynamic reading of the space and its functioning. The external facades utter further this logic in an ascending order through the use of screening elements that are also vertically developed along a spiral from bottom to top.

The University Hall of residence in Novoli, Florence designed by C+S ASSOCIATI demarkates another contribution to the definition of the urban block as regards both the project site occupation strategy and the use of internal voids where internal facades face each other and open toward internal gardens. The idea of an internal universe, with more complex and variety compared to what might appear to the outside, could also be noted in the work of C+S ASSOCIATI that with a language that is derived from the Italian traditional rationalist thinking establish an urban pixel that re-stitches parts of the city around it that avoids compositional monotony through an acknowledged differentiation of materials.

The selection of the buildings that follow offers the reader a representative list on which he can base observations on the deep meanings of the relation between institution and architectural language.

Marco Atzori

1See Also: Antonello Marotta, Antonello - “Diller + Scofidio. Il teatro della dissolvenza” IT Revolution in Architettura, Edilstampa, Roma 2005

2 SMITHSON, Alison - “HOW TO RECOGNIZE AND READ MAT BUILDING”, Architectural Design 9/74