FINAL+PROJECT

media type="file" key="Proyecto ingles video.wmv" width="300" height="300"


 * Final Project**

This project is about a teachers’ residence. The building __is develop__ in a context where it is part of a group of buildings that faces a square, which is dedicated to a particular artist, and these are neighbors of a group of artists’ houses __arrange__ around the square too.

The building is composed __by__ **(of)** an apartment unit, which has six floors with two apartments each, and by three independent floors under it, that contains the public services.

The main plastic idea of the building’s design is about __a band__ //(??? what do you mean by a band?)// that covers all the composition of the building from the apartment unit to the non-private areas, and makes a transition between both of them. In the apartment unit, this band contains the service unit and the circulation unit and it creates vertical relations; and in the common areas the same band creates horizontal relations by composing the ledges of the different zones.

In this project the main figure is the teacher, so the spaces are created to please the needs related to their profession. That is why there is a personal studio in each apartment, but also a library and a book store/cybercafé in the common areas of the building.

However it’s necessary to please their life needs too. For this, each professor has a personal apartment, where he can find as well as the studio, a living room, dining room and kitchen, all of them integrated, a bedroom with its own bathroom, a small bathroom for guests and a laundry room. There are also some common services like a restaurant, swimming pool – bar, a gym and of course the lobby area to receive the people that come to the residence.

The building also satisfies some context needs. First of all, it follows a standard urban norm related to the height of all buildings around (no more than 36m high at the front and 24m high at the back), and it is contained in a 16 x 40m² plot where three of its faces are blocked by three other buildings, so its relation with its context occurs through the front side only. Then, the apartments have a relation with the exterior that allows the view of the zone’s plaza. And finally, the building in its lower part has some public services that may be used by external customers.

The materials used for this building are reinforced concrete for walls, floors, foundations, beams and columns, for its versatility and plastic advantages; and translucent glass on one side of each apartment, which creates a narrow relation with the exterior. Also, some iron is used in the windows’ frames.

The structure of the building is the post and lintel system, which means that it is held up by the columns and the beams. The columns have a 30x30cm² base dimension and they have a 6 meter span between each other, where wide beams resist the loads.

The building has some load-bearing walls, the ones that contain columns in their structure, but most of them are nonbearing walls.

To sum up, this is a building that is used as a teachers’ residence so the services are related to please their professional needs, but also the living needs. It has 100m² apartments for each teacher. The main materials used are reinforced concrete and glass in a post and lintel system structure. And finally the composition and design of this building tries to makes it as beautiful as possible but also as useful as needed.