Health Sciences College of Setúbal

Description

The location for the future School is an odd territory. Odd because it is, just like others we have met in the past, a residual urban space among contrasting, and therefore problematic, realities. It is a quite oblong piece of land, having the train railways to the west, the employment institute parking lot to the east, an area for future urban growth, but still with no defined parameters, to the north, and a small narrow path to the south, where we find a much strangled entrance to our lot.

Bearing in mind the noise coming from the railway and having doubts about the evolution of the surrounding areas, we started out from assuming that the building would be designed facing its inside world.

Two references were present to us: one of typological nature, the convent, and another one, of abstract character, the geode. Whilst the previous interested us as being a structure organized around cloisters, intended for a life of reclusion, knowledge and teaching, the latter, the geode, becomes interesting as a rock of rough appearance, very common on the outside, and yet holding a inner unexpected hollow crystalline surface. Given that the approach to the building is done from above, we considered still the design of the roof as equivalent to that of the remaining raised structures.

The School is thus a building structured around three patios (institutional/entrance – central/library – north/student association), the iddle one being almost all closed while the others are semi-open, “welcoming” those who enter. The roofing and outside walls of the building are opaque, displaying just some windows/skylights, that appear to the observer as “furrows” in its slightly rough texture. In the patios, however, reality suddenly changes. All the walls are vitreous, but given different degrees of transparency, highlighting a “School” atmosphere, both intense and intimate. At nightfall these internal “hollows” irradiate light and a crowd of human silhouettes and shadows of different shapes, which look like they were withdrawn from a Chinese shadow-theatre.