gebouw O faculty building
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competition entry, 2nd prize
in collaboration with B-architecten
address: Antwerpen, Belgium
client: Universiteit Antwerpen
programme: faculty building
project: 2012
Bevk Perović project team:
Matija Bevk
Vasa Perović
Tina Marn
Christophe Riss
Radim Louda
Andrej Ukmar
Ida Sedušak
Irene Salord
Located on the periphery of Antwerp, a campus of the University of Antwerp needs a new ‘centre’, a new building comprising of lecture halls and lab facilities only, to be shared by all of the university departments simultaneously.
The location for Gebouw O (Building O) is almost in the geometric centre of the campus, touching upon the bicycle/pedestrian spine, a path connecting all of the faculties of the campus. A line of old, large poplar trees transverses the location, splitting it in half.
Building O becomes a literal ‘centre’ of the campus, a circle, visible only from the air in its totality, half building and half square, with the line of poplar trees acting as a ‘screen’ for its fully glazed elevation.
A melon-like shape of the building, essentially an accumulation of lecture halls, is wrapped along the exterior by an undulating mirror-polished metal façade and a series of large cantilevering terraces to be simultaneously used as terraces for breaks between lectures and fire escape routes if necessary.
The front façade, completely open, but shaded by existing old trees, is a ‘picture’ of the life of the building, of the students waiting for the lectures to start, facing the large open plaza, the central square of the university, its new ‘heart’.