Main urban ideas
Instead of making a tower and a plinth, we propose to have a free and empty ground floor as big as we can, having the smallest foot for the tower. On the other hand we consider the 11.85m level (skybridge) as the main floor for relationships among buildings and uses. Besides we make a façade building, with the global new image, along the clean rooms and very well connected with them, to lodge the laboratories. These strategies give us the opportunity to continue the green soft line of trees that start in the student’s resident building.
Position of the tower
The ground floor will be in the line of the corridor between the buildings they called cleaning rooms; in the other direction it will go up to the limit of 30m from the main street.
Shape of the tower
The particular shape of the tower with its cantilevers gives a monumental entrance in the east façade, three floors high, at the end of an empty square with a linear pond. In the back side (west) the building gives shelter to the bike parking and the parking entrance. These two movements permit two terraces in the upper floors: the big one at the 5th floor (that is more or less the same high of the factory buildings) we imagine it as a roof garden with a labyrinth of plants. The small one at 8th floor can be a terrace with a fantastic view of Leuven. The tower rises up to 72m high in a 25x25m square plan.
Structural concept
The structure consist in a concrete central nucleus (which rooms the staircase, the lift tower, bathrooms and facilities) and long cantilevers connected each other with a line of a thin pillars between the two glass of the double façade. The corners at 45º in the concrete form and at 90º in the glass cladding contribute to the architectural idea of having a strong and rough structure behind a delicate glass skin.
Envelope
A double glass façade which interior is a long horizontal line of regular windows throughout the perimeter, and the exterior is a ventilated skin of very big panels of glass. As the exterior cladding is independent of the inner structure, we propose several proofs in a vertical or horizontal quarter lines.
Olmos Ochoa Arquitectos en colaboración con Baumschlager Eberle (BE-Lochau_A)
Colaboradores:
Jaime Smith
Laura Nieto
Coordinadora BE:
Valerie Keiper-Knorr
Datos:
Superficie solar: 13.614,44 m2
Superficie SR: 47.023,06 m2
Superficie BR: 17.408,00 m2
Total construido: 64.431,06 m2
18 plantas: 72,80 m altura
4 sótanos: 10,55 m profundidad
Programa:
Oficinas 500p
Laboratorios
115 aparcamientos de bicicletas
500 plazas aparcamiento
