STU Innovation Center in Bratislava

University of Sao Paulo

Project idea

The University is the cradle for the ideas that will lead the development of a society. For this reason, it is crucial that its physical space establishes a bonding link between the city where it sits in, the people that it serves and the students that will sooner be the professionals leading this progress.
The Innovation center combines the present structure and incorporates interventions to improve the permeability, in terms of visibility, mobility, and also of light and heat management. The project complex considers to make the least suddle interventions, but strategic and economic, so the perception of the community about the University keeps preserved, while the use of the space becomes more dynamic and integrated.

Project description

This project Idealizes the requalification of the campus as a facility for both students and citizens. The intention is to conserve a considerable part of the present building structure, and propose a new annex, that stands over the ground floor, creating a covered plaza. The main structure, preserved from the building that stands on the center of the STU campus nowadays, an inner courtyard, placed at the middle of the building, should allow distribution of natural light through the rooms of the innovation center and rectorade. It also ensures the circulation of air and the natural thermal regulation. At the west facade of the innovation center, a light steel structured service building will house the vertical axis of accessible circulation, the emergency stairs and the toilets, leaving plenty of space at the main construction for its programmes. The northern area of the complex is distinguished by another annex building suspended from the ground floor, which sets, at the level of pedestrians arrival, a covered plaza. This building will also be structured on steel, a material that allows generous spans, ideal for housing the mediateque. The new structure will also allow vertical expansions, since the modular steel construction resists well for weight additions.

Technical information

The first choice that was taken for this project, to conserve a considerable fraction of the present construction, was guided by the care about the impacts that the demolishing of a building causes, especially in terms of pollution, emission of noise, and also of heritage destruction. Keeping most of the construction and suiting the new program for the Innovation Center was a challenge, specially because of the unknown strenght of the present structure, which prevents it from the verticalization. So an annexed building was proposed, aiming to house the activities that require wide spans without obstruction, like presentation room and media library.
The new structure was thought to be built in steel latice estructure, a solution that allows quick and clean construction, that is light and that can handle a possible future vertical expansion, in case STU demands so.