Istituto alberghiero
concorso,2° classificato
Tortolì, ITALIA - 2004
A simple organism is articulated around the natural orography of the area in a succession of open spaces, terraces bordered by dry-stone walls, low elongated buildings, lying on the ideal course of the contour lines, subdivided by nucleus of activity and combined in the area as a whole according to their function (i.e. sports area, hotel institute, auditorium, laboratories, agricultural school and reception structure), making it easy and natural to identify and use, even independently, each sector.
A series of organisational, functional, economic and typological evaluations led us to prefer the idea of substantially maintaining the volume of the existing hotel, as a pre-existing structure to be reinterpreted, as a nodal element from which and on which to build.
the development of the project campus. In fact, it is spontaneous to imagine the combination of new and old functions as a system in which the various areas can be used in an integrated or independent way; in the same way, the landscape has been transformed by integrating the interventions with autochthonous essences, typical of the Mediterranean maquis.
The “campus” consists of a new building for accommodation, towards the lower limit of the hill to the north, which accommodates, in separate areas, students and guests who will be able to use it as an excellent hotel, set on the hill and shaded by the vegetation of the existing eucalyptus trees. A car park for about 140 cars will serve the accommodation structure, but also, given its barycentric position, the project auditorium and offices.
At the centre of the area affected by the intervention is the new building dedicated to classrooms for the Hotelier Institute, the offices of the school complex, and the large entrance hall of the auditorium, which is connected through a glazed pathway along the new internal square and garden – the true centres, “en plein air”, of the campus, with the existing building, currently functioning as a boarding school.
The shape of the current boarding school, which is compact and perhaps a little too massive in the existing context, is partly contained by a light screen, made of “bronze” effect metal mesh panels, which gives it new brilliance and transparency and brings it closer to its new, more specialised, new, technological function, as it houses the new laboratories and kitchens of the Hotelier Institute. Part of the façade has been redesigned by enlarging the glazing and redefining the cladding materials.
Towards the southern edge of the square and the garden, a portico departs from the laboratory building to connect with the new, possible future building of the agricultural school, with the ramp that connects with the entrance square and the southern car parks (about 200 spaces) with the area, where sports activities are planned, i.e. the future gymnasium and those already in operation such as the sports field, for which a possible future relocation (always in the area) and expansion has been planned.
A new system of car parks and road connections within the complex and connected to the existing and planned road system makes the complex perfectly usable both for ordinary users, i.e. students and school staff, and for the complementary users of the gymnasium, sports field, hotel and auditorium.