About

Campus Igara is the sports educa­tion campus of Health Sciences Federal Univer­sity of Porto Alegre (UFCSPA). Brazi­lian studio OSPA has won the archi­tec­tural compe­ti­tion to design the site with a proposal that includes a floa­ting foot­ball pitch.

OSPA Archi­tec­ture and Urbanism’s “two-faced” design for the 25,000-square-metre campus houses class­rooms, offices and other univer­sity faci­li­ties within a pair of high-rise blocks at the two ends of the site. Between these, the archi­tects propose a series of basket­ball courts shel­tered beneath the elevated foot­ball pitch.

The campus will be built in two phases, using a frame­work that combines steel and concrete elements. Students will move to the campus after the comple­tion of stage one.

Our city, our life

One site, two faces. Two possi­bi­li­ties of connec­ting Campus Igara with the city. The concepts “front x back,” “public x services” was never an option. A longi­tu­dinal axis, acces­sible and invi­ting, connects the two faces – inter­faces. Inter­faces that despite the hier­ar­chical distinc­tion are equally neces­sary to the compo­si­tion of the block, whose face today reveals the scars of our housing policy. Our city, our life. On the face of the buil­dings, the eyes of the city.

A public space

Campus Igara is more than a public insti­tu­tion, it will be a public space. This is the premise and guiding goal for the deve­lo­p­ment of the Campus Igara of UFCSPA. In an urban context still growing, Campus Igara emerges as a poten­tial arti­cu­la­ting element of both spatial and human rela­ti­onships that surrounds it. A square, fluid and permeable as is supposed to be, in contrast to the volu­metric density that the program­matic solu­tion suggests in a first approach.

Beyond academic activities

The program deve­lops within the natural exten­sion of the side­walk. The open space arti­cu­lates the campus’s func­tions far beyond the academic acti­vi­ties. The inde­pen­dent access, with inde­pen­dent controls for various uses also encou­rages diver­sity of users. Only two high buil­dings housing the univer­sity acti­vi­ties, the rest is square.

Molding memories

Good archi­tec­ture as itself presup­poses a proper solu­tion of envi­ron­mental varia­bles, as well as their comple­men­tary systems. The buil­dings of Campus Igara are oriented to receive lower thermal load, proper venti­la­tion and lighting of indoor sports faci­li­ties, which have been studied exten­si­vely. However, it is note­worthy the simpli­fi­ca­tion of internal flows of the campus, being through open and invi­ting stairs when the vertical circu­la­tion is needed, as opposed to the use of eleva­tors, or by the appro­xi­ma­tion of the other acti­vi­ties of the street level.

This second consti­tutes the impo­sing gesture of the project: the rela­ti­onship between the main func­tions of a campus and areas of informal inter­ac­tion and convi­via­lity, which allow us to go beyond the tech­nical degree. It molds perso­na­li­ties. After all, what are our memo­ries from univer­sity time?

Exterior views

Ground plans

Sections

Impressions

Structure

Companies involved