Architecture firm, beSTe arkitektura has developed the renovation and expansion of one of the buildings that comprise the Faculty of Humanities and Education Sciences of the University of Mondragon, Gipuzkoa. This building, called Dorleta, is separated from the Nagusi building, the second building that is in this faculty.

The project has previously studied the needs for new teaching mechanisms. Thus, the main objective was established in the versatility offered by the spaces: classrooms, study areas or leisure areas, among others.
The beSTe arkitektura studio has developed a "relatively unfinished" concept when it comes to remodeling the Dorleta building. Current educational forms require multipurpose spaces that can serve both as classrooms and as spaces for meetings or informal activities. On the ceilings is where this architectural conception is found, as they host the technological and electrical configuration, giving freedom to future changes.

The extension of the Dorleta building takes place with the insertion of a 6 meter deep bay where various functions will be carried out. On the other hand, the concrete frame has been maintained to facilitate better lighting. While the interior received the greatest attention in terms of design and organization, the exterior, for its part, also played an important role. Each face (North, South, East and West) adhere to the set in response to the environment that surrounds the building.
 

Description of project by beSTe arkitektura

The Dorleta building was built in 1976 to house a School of Teachers and later integrated into Mondragon Unibertsitatea as part of the Faculty of Humanities and Educational Sciences (HUHEZI). The Eskoriatza campus of this faculty is made up of both Dorleta and the 'Nagusia' building, located on the other side of the Deba river. The two buildings work together, both at the program and facilities level -the footbridge over the river being the element that allows this union and joint operation.

The project arises as to the result of a participatory process of shared diagnosis that aims to rethink the spaces of the campus. It is a transversal project that seeks to spatialize the specific characteristics and needs (pedagogical, relational and affective), both present and future, of the community that makes up the Faculty.

In addition to giving architectural shape to the key concepts that are adopted in the process deliberation tables, such as the adaptability and appropriability of the spaces, or the porosity towards the context, among others, the main decision of the project focuses on the possibilities which opens the (necessary) reform of the Dorleta building.

The project proposes as an initial premise to maintain its concrete structure, with a transversal span of 11 meters suitable for multipurpose learning spaces, adding a new 6-meter deep bay. This addition allows the surface of the old building to become a kind of adaptable classroom, and the new bay to absorb both the circulations and the more informal activities of the learning processes of its inhabitants.

This premise of addition is adapted and expanded on the ground floor to accommodate the new uses demanded by the pedagogical strategy of the university. Its main piece, KoLaborategia, adopts the same dimension of the cloister of the 'Nagusia' building to house the 'Laboratory of education and communication for the digital society', created recently. The intermediate space between KoLaborategia and the old Dorleta structure makes up the new hall, the main meeting place on campus. This space is called 'Hondartza', the Beach. The shared diagnostic process thus named the spaces that should be more indeterminate, left raw: spaces with a vocation to be appropriate for various uses, spaces adaptable over time.

In this meaning, the flexibility demanded by the new pedagogical proposals makes it necessary to test new types of classrooms. More than classrooms, these spaces are defined as flexible learning areas. They are relatively unfinished spaces, in which the installations are concentrated on the ceilings. Ceilings where most of the devices are located that guarantee the adaptability of these spaces to a pedagogical process that demands to be changeable over time - both to the variability in the size of the workgroups, as well as to the constant reformulation of the pedagogical contexts that inhabit them. In these ceilings different technological layers are assembled which, facilitating the mobility of the force points, guaranteeing acoustic comfort, etc., form a mechanism capable of being transformed in the future.

An itinerary around the exterior of the building shows, in turn, that it responds in different ways to the urban space it rearranges. To the northwest, the building should respond to the river's edge walk. This face of the building is crude, the concrete walls are folding to accompany the walk. To the southeast, the new patio appears somewhat more sophisticated, more boiled. It picks up the south orientation embracing a new outdoor space, to which it offers façade finishes of pinewood decking from the nearby forests. A structure superimposed on these faces of the building works at the same time as a support for the shading systems, the railings and the tensioned mesh lattices that will serve as a framework for the plant species that accompany the building. Species that also inhabit the roof of Hondartza, converted into a garden that returns to the environment the same surface that the extension of the building has occupied.

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Architects.- Ibon Salaberria and Itziar Imaz. Collaborators.- Ula Iruretagoiena, Ibai Madariaga, Asier Sanchez and Alex Orive. Technical architecture.- Igor Lili.
Structure.- INAK ingeniaritza. Installations.- Ingeniería Arrese-Igor. Landscape.- LUR paisajistak. Signage.- Gorka Eizagirre.
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Mondragon University, Guipuzkoa, Basque Country, Spain.
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BeSTe Arkitektura, founded by Ibon Salaberria, is a Spanish architecture studio based in  Zarautz-Gipuzkoa. Ibon Salaberria is an architect by the ETSA of San Sebastián (2003) and finalist in the first final project of iguzzini Spain. He completed the Master's Degree in Participation and Community Development (2015) by the University of the Basque Country.

Between 1998 and 2005 he worked at Arteleku (former art center of San Sebastian) as a resident "artist". During this period he coordinated the international workshop "bizi garen espazioen eraldakuntza" and the interdisciplinary laboratory "labitaciones". He was also part of the editorial team of the "Project of expansion and rehabilitation of Arteleku" between 1999 and 2003 with BGM architects.

In 2006 he founded the TOKI arkitekturak studio. TOKI's work has been selected in several exhibitions and catalogs since its inception: In 2007, he was selected in the exhibition "JAE (Young Architects of Spain)" and has traveled to Madrid, Paris, Rome, Brussels, Stockholm, New York, Chicago, Washington, Dallas and other cities. In the same year, TOKI was selected for the "arquia-próxima" catalog where the works of 128 very young Spanish architects are exhibited. In 2007 he was a finalist in the "Awards of the Official College of Architects Vasco Navarro" in the category of housing.

In 2008, in the publication of "44 Young International Architects" in the selection by Grupo Vía, where works by 44 architects from Europe and America are exhibited. In 2009 he was part of the exhibition "Reflections.

The corridor in the collective housing "held in Arquería de Nuevos Ministerios. At the same time, TOKI was selected in the list-map of 40 studies for digital monographic publication 2G Dossier Jóvenes Arquitectos Españoles.   He is Professor of Architectural Projects at the ETSA of San Sebastian since 2007. Coordinator and Commissioner of "City and Other Policies" at the Center for Contemporary Culture of San Sebastian 2013-2018.

In 2015 he founded beSTe Arkitektura Agentzia Bat. In 2016 he obtained the "bronze" award in the American Architecture Prize in the interior design category by TABA. In 2016 he won the Ascer Awards for the interior design of TABA. In 2019 he is selected in the architecture FAD awards by JAjaus.
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Published on: February 4, 2021
Cite: "Rethinking architecture for a flexible pedagogy. Dorleta building by beSTe arkitektura" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/rethinking-architecture-a-flexible-pedagogy-dorleta-building-beste-arkitektura> ISSN 1139-6415
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