Structural force for the Torcuato di Tella University. Edificio Sáenz Valiente by Josep Ferrando
03/07/2020.
[Buenos Aires] Argentina
metalocus, NADIA GHELFI
metalocus, NADIA GHELFI
Description of project by Josep Ferrando
The proposal for the new building of the Torcuato Di Tella University presents itself as an organization rigorously open that integrates campus diversity into a single spatial and structural system.
The property contains particular rhythms and sequences: on the one hand, the large volume on Avenida Figueroa Alcorta with its grid of imposing columns and capitals; on the other, the sheds with its series of porticos and corbels. The proposal combines both orders proposing a modularity integrated in the cloister of its location.
Tectonics becomes the base matrix for the austere but multifaceted expressiveness of the building. In an ascending sense, it presents a tripartite organization, in which each part adds one floor to the previous one, while the number of structural supports triples and doubles, successively, in response to the spatial needs of the uses required at each level, and giving a growing slenderness to the whole.
The building becomes lighter as it approaches the ground, enhancing transparency in the transverse direction between the patio and the street, and solidifies as it detaches in correspondence with the longitudinal organization of the interiors.
In favor of a dual purpose of spatial specificity and versatility, the structure accompanies the trends of the program without becoming prescriptively functionalist, and, together with the facilities, occupies the perimeter of the building, freeing the floor plan, but modulating it and influencing its scale of repetition. A complementary relationship is established between them: while the structure loses dimension due to the reduction of loads supported when ascending, the facilities lose dimension due to the reduction of their ducts as they descend. The envelope thus presents a thickness that gives both general rationality and openness over time.
The tense organizational serenity that results from embedding and matching dissimilar rhythms, from the entire campus to the definition of the interiors, characterizes at the same time that it gives the new building the capacity to integrate the campus of which it is a part.
Josep Ferrando Bramona is an architect based in Barcelona and director of the Josep Ferrando Architecture office. He has combined design, construction and teaching since the beginning of his career as an architect.
Since 1998 he has been a professor of projects in schools such as ETSAB (Department of Architectural Projects, Housing and City Course, City of Barcelona Award 2016 with the research "Arquitectos de Cabecera“), Torcuato di Tella University of Buenos Aires, Escola Técnica Superior de Arquitectura La Salle (ETSALS), the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), the Hochschule für Technik Zürich (HSZT), the Escola de disseny i art Sina and the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) of Barcelona and Rio de Janeiro where he is Director of Master Space Design Methdology. He has also been invited to prestigious international schools, where he has directed workshops and semesters.
In 2014 he participated with the exhibition "In progress Matter & Light" at the 14th Architecture Biennial of the prestigious Architekturforum Redes de Berlin Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Santiago de Chile and the Biennial International Architecture of Buenos Aires. In 2016, with his work "casa entre medianeras", he was part of the "Unfinished" exhibition of the Spanish pavilion of the 15th Venice Architecture Biennial awarded with the Golden Lion of the exhibition. In the cultural field he has participated in numerous juries, among which stand out the FAD 2018 and the XI BIAU Awards, and since 2018 he has headed the Vocalía de Cultura of the Architects' Association of Catalonia, at which time he was awarded the National Culture Prize.