Pisa pavilion and conference hall

Date: 2017
Design/direction: Eduardo Delgado Orusco
Team: Javier Rincón Sánchez, Drawyoudreams (images)
Competition: Mention

 

Our proposal for the competition of the Pisa Conference Hall is evidently a subsidiary of the Campus where the famous architectural pieces that have given universal fame to this Italian city are located: its cathedral, its baptistery and its bell-tower, celebrated by its inclination.


These pieces, like all the architecture of Gothic inspiration, are characterized by the structural dominance reached by the stone masons and builders who, from the 12th century, began to work and to define the new style. In particular the techniques of composition of large factories and structures were reached from the stone structure seen. Pilasters, columns, arches and vaults, among other elements, served to configure the characteristic presence of these buildings, abandoning the massive elements that had characterized the immediately previous stages of construction and giving way to much more stylish and elegant structures. And this was so even when trying to lift large opaque-or barely pierced-canvases generating what we might call a superposition of skins.

In much more recent times, and in Italy as in other European countries, such as France, the United Kingdom or Spain, similar expressions have appeared, linked to the use of the materials characteristic of modernity, with the help of outstanding figures in engineering. At this point we are referring to the cases - among others - by Henri Labrouste, Gustave Eiffel or Eugène Freyssinet, in the French sphere; Eduardo Torroja, in Spanish or Pier Luigi Nervi, in Italian. In this same line could cite other authors that come to this day, such as Renzo Piano, Norman Foster or Richard Rogers.

These authors, and others, following their wake, have been able to re-trace the buildings, not from a style or a language, but from the expression of structural and constructive sincerity, recovering and reinterpreting in a certain way, the intentions of the stonemasons And builders who made possible the neighboring structures of the new Pisa Conference Hall.

In this way the layout of our proposal is explained, firstly as a new structure conceived with the same laws that were those buildings to which it is wanted to accompany. However, the dimensional limitations of the new Pisa Conference Hall - maximum height 10 meters and project area of ​​about 1,500 square meters - gives it the subsidiary value of the one discussed at the beginning of this text.

Likewise, the understanding of the structure as a double skin and a double volume - a box inside a box - offers new spatial and functional values ​​that are of interest. In fact, our auditorium is configured as a prismatic volume - an intentional cube whose cover is occupied by the cafeteria required in the program, which includes a small garden - contained in a cylinder defined by its vertical guidelines that are covered by a light dome And transparent.

When approaching the piece, it is discovered that the floor of the cylinder is located 3.5 meters below the floor of the outer campus, so that the inner box emerges from that floor that serves as an exhibition area and possible extension of the Auditorium, generating the illusion of a certain flotation of the interior volume. In the perimeter of this floor some auxiliary uses would be placed orders in the program of the set. Finally, that void would be saved by a light footbridge that underlines the values ​​of this space, while evoking the drawbridges of the medieval fortresses.




The canvases of the inner cube also serve as a projection field of moving images - films - that announce the programming or account for what is happening in the interior. However, because it is jealous of the cylindrical structure, it is possible to limit the possible role of these projections in the Campus.

Finally, a small pavilion splintered from the main volume, would serve to offer information and dispatch of tickets, while extending the presence of the project, next to the new location of the Capitolina Lupa, ordering this part of the Campus.