We understand a university campus as an open and permeable structure, a place of exchange of experience and knowledge. The building is conceived as an infrastructure that avoids any kind of hermeticism, in order to accommodate all kinds of activities.

Within the gauges defined in the planning, Building D exploits the good orientation and the idea of the staggered section defined in the planning to provide extraordinarily generous outdoor spaces with multiple potentialities on each floor:

• To become an extension of the central boulevard;
• To generate a route through the exterior to the different programmes in the building;
• To offer a programmed space to fill with activities;
• A space open to interdisciplinary encounters, defending the idea of a hybrid research community and promoting the image of an open science;
• Casual spaces for socialising in contrast to the supposed seriousness of scientific research;
• To offer large area of greenery provided on each floor (naturalised workspaces);
• To offer healthy and radically ventilated spaces, which we have discovered to be so necessary lately, also in teaching and working spaces.

The project refuses to submit to functionalism, even if its programme is highly technical. It is preferred to offer a generic structure as a place of appropriation for future users, with both indoor and outdoor spaces.
The specificity of each of the plants is defined by the section itself. As the building undergoes tender processes, the compactness of the floor plan decreases, with more façade per interior surface area. This can determine more appropriate uses than others for each of the floors, offering great variability of spaces with a single spatial conception.

This homogeneous grid, a 6.25 x 6.25 metre grid, is superimposed on a pre-existing, partially constructed car park. The mesh starts from the car park lights in one direction, but is offset in the other, to achieve a regular mesh and fully modular spaces.

The ground and first floors, forming a double-height package, function as a transition structure between the underground section and the upper terrace floors. This first podium gives continuity to the basement structure with precast concrete pillars and beams. The five floors are built with a lightweight structure and dry assembly, with recycled steel beams and CLT plywood floors, reducing weight, material volume and the building’s environmental impact.