UB Cultural Campus in Madrid

Heidi Flores
Rania Moussa (Microclimate Voronoi)
Yifan He
Xuecheng Cai (Slope Garden)

Miguel Guitart

Spain study abroad program
Summer 2019

BS Arch
MArch

The study abroad program in Spain had students design a UB Cultural Campus in Madrid. Due to the site’s position on the threshold of the urban fabric and the natural landscape of the university district, students had to navigate and understand the social, cultural, and built context of the city.

Both Heidi Flores and Rania Moussa, with Microclimate Voronoi, and Yifan He and Xuecheng Cai, with Slope Garden, sought to embrace and connect these two different landscapes. Both designs were highly influenced by the integration of vegetated landscapes as a way to mediate between city and country. 

Flores and Moussa developed their design by using Voronoi diagramming as their organizational strategy. This partitioning system uses points, or seeds, in a plane to divide that plane into regions, allowing for the creation and analysis of spatial relationships. Voronoi formations are often found, at both macro and micro scales, in natural environments such as cells in a leaf.

Flores and Moussa used site and program data as seeds, placing them in relation to the site context. They picked locations based on the conditional factors of public versus private, sounds, views, and the amount of sunlight received in different areas. These points and their connections were used to generate Voronoi cells, which became fundamental to the formal and spatial layout for the project. 

The cells were further manipulated and multiplied based on programmatic and spatial requirements. The breakdown and division of individual cells opened up opportunities for circulation and a variation in both interior and exterior conditions. The pathways played a critical role in the landscape by creating the transition between city and natural landscape. Pathway thickness varied to define public versus private circulation.

As a means to provide shade and comfortable exterior conditions for Madrid’s hot climate, vegetation was integrated into the design. By using the natural vegetation found throughout the city, the density of plants and trees can change the atmospheric conditions within those areas. These microclimates were designed to provide views, gardens, and controlled isolation for students in the private spaces. The use of vegetation not only created an isotropic landscape but promoted and embraced a green landscape campus that welcomed and engaged the city.

He and Cai responded to the site through gradation, using program to transition between and connect these two separate environments. Their design moved fluidly from loud to quiet, from urban to university.

The form, as the name Slope Garden suggests, is a physical translation of their conceptual motives. The building responds to the site’s terrain, utilizing the existing sloping grade as a programmatic organizational strategy. Private programs are embedded in the landscape, allowing the roof to fall even with the street on the upper level of the site. As the program transitions from private to semi-public to public, the building gradually slopes until it meets the lower level of the university district.  

He and Cai’s design responded to the intense sunlight that the site receives during summer months. An operable bamboo shading system allows users to control the temperature and atmospheric conditions of their interior environments. The roof becomes a public garden, maximizing green space and providing shaded exterior areas. The garden becomes a direct, physical connection between city and landscape.