École Supérieure des Métiers Artistiques, ESMA and student accommodation by Mateo Arquitectura
15/02/2022.
[Montpellier] France
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
Project description by Josep Lluís Mateo
The ESMA (École Supérieure des Métiers Artistiques) stands on the site of a former army barracks, specifically on the parade ground.
Military buildings to be reused and new buildings that will shape a new neighbourhood surround us. We outline the parade ground, respecting the great trees around its edges and defining an open communal courtyard. The volume, though rigid, seeks to adapt to the place.
The brief is complex and highly attractive; a small condensed city: a large inner plaza, a restaurant, a large technical space: the film set, lecture rooms and academic spaces along with dwellings, sports facilities, etc. A small city with academic, leisure and residential activities. The project seeks to address this vital condensation in a way that is at once orderly and free.
The building is hard and repetitive, closed on the street side and more open onto its inner courtyard. Made of mass concrete, it is softened by the different textures and colours it offers us: rougher and darker in contact with the ground, and smoother and lighter as it rises towards the sky.
The mass is protected and controls its relationship with the sun by means of slats, awnings or blinds. In the academic spaces in particular, we try to achieve different degrees of brightness; the bedrooms must be able to be more opaque.
Its image is also conceived in relation to the great trees and the buildings that surround it.
Josep Lluís Mateo was born in Barcelona (1949) and graduated in Architecture in 1974 from the ETSAB and gained his doctorate (cum laude) at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in 1994.
Mateo’s practice is based in Barcelona, and he is currently involved in a number of local and international projects such as the new Film Theatre of Catalonia in Barcelona, the new headquarters for PGGM Pension Fund Company in Zeist, Holland and the office building on the former site of Renault factories in Boulogne-Billancourt, Paris, among others.
With each of his projects, Mateo seeks to connect the practice of construction with research and development in both intellectual and programmatic terms. He works in the area between the sphere of ideas and the physical world of reality.
Academic collaborations and teaching:
Josep Lluís Mateo has been Professor of the Architecture Department at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich (ETH-Z) since 2002. He has also taught and lectured at numerous institutions around the world, including Princeton, Columbia University in New York, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, ABK Stuttgart, UP8 Paris, OAF Oslo and ITESM Mexico. He was Visiting Scholar at the Jean P. Getty Center in Los Angeles from 1991 to 1992. Josep Lluís Mateo is President since 2009 of the Board of Directors of the Barcelona Institute of Architecture. He has been a member of a number of juries and expert committees, including the Quality Committee of Barcelona City Council (2000-2008), and for prizes such as the European Landscape Award and the Thyssen Award.
Recent exhibitions and prizes:
The practice’s work has been exhibited on numerous occasions thanks to its international influence. New York’s MoMA devoted a space in the exhibition “Spain: On Site” (2006) to its apartment building in Valencia for the Sociopolis Project. Individual exhibitions include those at Ras Gallery (Barcelona, 2009), Architekturgalerie Aedes (Berlin, 2004), Architekturzentrum Wien (Vienna, 1998), Col•legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya (Barcelona, 1998),Galerie Fragner (Prague, 1998), Galerie Aedes (Berlin, 1994), Architekturgalerie Luzern (Luzern, 1992) and Architekturgalerie Munich (Munich, 1991).
The work of Josep Lluís Mateo has been awarded many prizes, including:
- Top International Purpose-Built Venue 2008, First Prize. Best International Convention Centre category.
Organized by C&IT magazine, London. Project: CCIB-Barcelona International Convention Centre
- 2008 Archizinc Award, First Prize. Collective Housing category. Project: Sant Jordi Students’ Hall of Residence, Barcelona
- European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture - Mies van der Rohe Award 2005, Runner-up. Project: CCIB- Barcelona International Convention Centre
- 15th Award of Grupo Dragados de Arquitectura.