School of Art, Architecture and Design, Berlin

School of Art, Architecture and Design, Freie Universität, Berlín

Projects 8

Delivered: 2008 Spring

Tutors: Ángela Gª de Paredes + Iñaki Carnicero

TU: López-Peláez

The Free University is the largest of Berlin three universities. The mat-like campus was designed by Candilis, Josic, Woods and Schiedhelm. The aim of the project was to fill the void between the most important building, Humanities Institute, and the rest of the departments. The new school provides with the structure to link and nails the urban context. The building sits flushed with Fabeck St. and creates a recurrence pattern for building and natural components, based on the Sonsbeek Pavilion in Arnhem by Aldo van Eyck.

The new school of art, architecture and design includes facilities for teaching, research, working, model-making and crafts, comprising classrooms, seminar rooms and workshops. Also, there are administrative offices, shop, cafeteria, library and an auditorium. The space between Josic, Candillis, Woods and Schiedhelm building and school forms an outer atrium and prompts the approach by two ends of building. The inner circulation space works as a comb, with only one storey, with two access points as ends. The circulation servant space is the foot of the perpendicular served spaces.

The main materials are concrete, glass and lawn. The highly legible structure is made of 3 meters-multiple span parallel concrete walls pierced by the circulation corridor. By the high length of these walls, courtyards appear among them with a semi-circular wall marking the access. The Fabeck St. façade is made of glass, or polycarbonate panels in places where more privacy is necessary, covered by a spread metallic mesh. The opposite elevation is glazed. The inner elevations in the courtyards are glazed too and the floors are made of lawn and Ipe wood paving.

The light in a teaching building has to be one of the most important deals. In this project, all the light in work spaces is drawn into by vertical glazed spans located in different height depending on the space below. The placement of these elements is based on northern or southern orientation. The light is sifted by diffusive sheets of wood on the wall-perpendicular concrete joists.