A main circulation is structured by a coffered slab roof that runs through the campus parallel to General Velásquez Avenue, allowing access to all venues. The classrooms are separated by courtyards and gardens that allow ventilation and control solar radiation together with a vertical floor to ceiling brise-soleil, attached as a double façade, creating a sequence of vertical surfaces. The brutalist language is given by the finish of a perfect concrete formwork, composed of tongue and groove wood paneling, distanced by steel spacers that ensure the plumb leveling of the walls. The structural concept of the project comes mainly from the use of open plans that allow the spatial flexibility of the functional program by using coffer slabs and exposing the pillars on the facade. The project is then summarized by the use of four identifiable elements in the composition of the building: pillar, coffer slab, lateral walls and brise-soleil.
This campus was built by the Board of Improvement of Arica (JAA), initially for the University of Chile and now used by the University of Tarapacá, and was designed in two stages. The first (1969) included classrooms, laboratories and offices, while the second (1971) supplemented the program with an auditorium, administrative pavilion and more classrooms. The main entrance, on the high level of the site, is from General Velasquez Avenue through a broad elevated terrace that extends the street level towards the interior of the site. Two staircases covered by a canopy, and conceived as sculptural bodies, cantilever towards the courtyards and descend the two stories defined by the slope. As Claudio Galeno explains, the campus is "an interior citadel that favors the definition of landscaped interior spaces, and basically does not present a clear façade to the main avenue from which you enter, the only exterior façade is defined towards the sea (Pedro Montt Avenue)".
37
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker