UEPM Quito Classrooms, South American School Building Project, Ecuadorian Architecture Images
UEPM Quito Classrooms in Ecuador
12 Nov 2020
UEPM Quito Classrooms
Architecture: Espinoza Carvajal Arquitectos
Location: Quito, Ecuador, South America
photo © Bicubik
Relation with the context – There are dual context relations to which the UEPM Quito Classrooms project responds to. On the one hand the city/nature, where the maximum tension point is the central block -that counterpose and links both realities- and on the other hand, existing school/landscape.
photos © Jag Studio
Total path – articulation of volumes in order to generate a free movement in the ground floor and a circular one in the upper floor. I.e. the project could be understood as the superposition of a continuous empty and an upper ring that are linked by the vertical circulations. When the central block rises, it allows at the same time to continue the journey from the existing school to the new playground and include a large flexible and covered space that strengthens the activities of academic practice and methodology in the schoolyard.
photo © Bicubik
Gradualness and intermediate spaces – the set of blocks configures the empty as an intermediate space obtaining a phenomenological graduation by stripes that is evident in access, circulation, auctions and courtyards. It is decided to disperse the object in the field to achieve a sequence of full and empty where the user moves through gaps of different scale and character. This gradualness allows that at the moment of crossing the blocks the urban continuity, the patios, portals, gardens and the forest will be present.
photo © Jag Studio
Constructive process: efficiency and expression
Beyond the variables of location, program and language, the project receives from the constructive process a methodology that responds to efficiency and expression. The scale of the project demands to systematize the variables so that they do not get out of control in their constructive and economic dimension, which raises the question of understanding both the possibilities of systematization and its limits. In this way the technical decision becomes more complex when taking into account the conformation of a coherent and expressive whole.
photo © Jag Studio
This is evidenced, for example, in the structural system, – “V” column of the central block that creates a technical solution against structural rigidity conditions and highlights the difference regarding the regularity of the other blocks creating a gravitational center of the project-, in the system of enclosures – repetition elements on the facade that hold the handrail and generate a rhythm in the object- and in the installation system – when going out to the facade and showing beyond its functionality-.
photo © Jag Studio
So that the technical response is not enough to materialize the project, but the correspondence between the parts that make up the architectural object is necessary and, in that sense, “every technical decision had to pass through the expressive filter of the project”, although the same can say in reverse: “Every expressive decision must also be useful”.
photo © Bicubik
Thus, a work position is formed that seeks to respond to reality without forgetting its complexity, seeking a balance between the aspirations of the job -as a constant revision of the commonly established- and the limits of the assignment, between the narrative of the object and the necessity to control the variables that the scale of the project presented.
photos © Jag Studio
UEPM Classrooms in Quito, Ecuador – Building Information
Architecture: Espinoza Carvajal Arquitectos
Project team: Kenny Espinoza, Santiago Espinoza, Marlon Espinoza
location: Ecuador, El Inca, DMQ, Quito
De Las Orquideas 56, Quito 170138
Completion Year: 2019
Building area: 2910 sqm
Other participants: Juan Carlos Villacres, Andy Molina
Materials: Concrete, glass, steel
photo © Bicubik
Photo credits: Bicubik, Jag Studio
UEPM Classrooms, Quito images / information received 121120
Location: Quito, Ecuador
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