Innovation Center – concrete exterior creates a heavy feeling of the building
Plan of Lo Contador campus
Interior lobby of Innovation Center
The day we visited the Universidad Católica was a day of figures and voids. At the San Joaquín campus, we studied two figures: Torres Siamesas and the Innovation Center. Each was an inverted version of the other. Torres Siamesas, built first, had a exterior wooden material patio with a glass structure standing in the center. Inside the glass shell is a polycarbonate pair of boxes that have slight displacements on the top. The heavier interior with a softer exterior is reversed in the Innovation Center with a heavy concrete exterior and softer wooden, glass, and steel interior. The Innovation Center is a heavy (in terms of weight) and light (in terms of light) from the concrete exterior and smooth and light inside the lobby. The first image is a sketch of the lobby of the Innovation Center. The difference between the two buildings reflects what Alejandro Aravena (architect) wanted and what his client wanted.
Lo Contador campus focused on voids. With limited space, the university chose to build down into the earth rather than up into the air. The center band of the university was a void used for traffic, displays, projects, sketching, and more. Cutting into the ground allows there to be classrooms and libraries under the ground level and maintaining the voids. The contrast of this void with the heavy structural figures at San Joaquín creates a dichotomy of the two campuses of the same university. It’s important to remember the importance of site characteristics and boundary conditions when designing.