Hasta La Ideas

Spanish firm Hoz Fontan Arquitectos have completed a new Faculty of Business Studies at Mondragon University in Oñati, Spain.

The glazed building comprises classrooms, administrative offices, a hall and library.

The library and hall are raised up to afford views over the surrounding area, cantilevering out from the main building.

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Photographs are by José Hevia.

Here are some more details from the architects:

The university required a space in which to impart regulated and continuous education, lodge the administration’s office, a library and the assembly room.

The building meets all these requirements divided in four volumes.

The first three volumes are destined to hold the educational and administration sections, and are formed with specific characteristics for the development of its activities; it is in contact with the ground and organized in such way that can function autonomously.

Nevertheless, the fourth volume is the one that best represents the building’s identity.

The library, the assembly hall and the teaching staff’s offices are arranged in a lifted volume that allows having view-points on the trees that surround the building, capturing a general view of Oñati.

This lifting creates a great porch entry to the building and at the same time a generous hall, constituting both of them the building’s main relational areas. Areas that, seen as public squares and watchtowers from which admire the scenery, will allow the connection between students and surrounding environment, acting the university not only as knowledge media, but also as a mediation support between local culture, natural landscape and university life.

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Credits:

Location: Ibarra, Oñati
Architecture: Hoz Fontan Arquitectos
Project directors: Angel de la Hoz, Cristina Fontán, Pablo de la Hoz
Executive project and construction management: LKS, Hoz Fontán Arquitectos
Collaborators: Marta Porroy

See also:

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Haifa University Centre by Chyutin Architects	PKU University of Law by Kokaistudios	Biotechnological Park Building by Tatiana Bilbao

Admit it. Your seven-year-old nephew could out-HTML tag you any day and you think that a Cascading Style Sheet is something with a thread count. That’s where the mediabistro.com mothership comes in. They’ve asked us to tell you about an upcoming weekend course in HTML and CSS. In one backslashtastic weekend (March 26-27), artist, designer, and interactive developer David Tristman will guide you in breathing digital life into a pre-designed web page. Along the way, you’ll learn how to turn a PSD layout into HTML, the fundamentals of CSS3 styling of color and transitions, and why “@font-face” describes more than the contorted visages of typographers on deadline. By Sunday, you’ll be creating fully functional web pages, debating the finer points of inline and block display, and have gained all the tools necessary to launch your site. Register here.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Slovenian studio Arhitektura Jure Kotnik have completed this colourful extension to a Kindergarten in Ljubljana.

Called Kindergarten Kekec, the building has rotating vertical shutters over the glazed facade, painted in bright colours on one side and plain wood on the other.

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Photographs are by Miran Kambič.

The information that follows is from the architects:

KINDERGARTEN KEKEC

Kindergarten Kekec is an extension of a typical Slovene prefab kindergarten from the 1980s. Situated in one of Ljubljana’s residential areas, Kekec answers the growing demand for kindergartens. This comes as a result of Ljubljana having witnessed considerable population growth as well as legislative changes and a planned increase in building density inside the highway ring surrounding the city.

The construction is made from prefabricated wood and was built in three days only.

The main design concept derives from the existing kindergarten’s lack of play equipment.

The new façade solves this weakness by offering a play element along all three exterior walls.

It consists of dark brown roughcast and timber slats revolving around their vertical axe.

The slats are the colour of natural wood on one side but painted into nine different bright colours on the other side.

Aside from serving as a shading element, the toy slats provide for children’s play and learning: as the children manipulate the colourful wooden planks they get to know different colours, experience wood as a natural material and constantly change the appearance of their kindergarten, all at the same time.

The new kindergarten annex is attached to the south side of the existing building and stretches into the garden, which has enlarged the volume by an additional 130m2 of playroom surfaces. Playrooms are compact but allow for the furniture to be arranged in various formations.

Daylight floods the interior from three sides as well as the roof.

Located between the two playrooms, washrooms have large glass openings, which visually increase their volume as well as ease tutor supervision. Wardrobes in the narrow cloakroom are made from pure natural wood.

Wardrobes in the narrow changing room are made from pure natural wood and have pull-out boxes for shoes in all the colours of the façade, which function as a space saver, since they also serve as a bench.

Architect: Arhitektura Jure Kotnik
Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia
Project team: Jure Kotnik, Andrej Kotnik
Client: Mestna občina Ljubljana
Structural Engineering: CBD d.o.o. www.cbd.si
Mechanical Engineering: Linasi Peter
Electrical Engineering: Iztok Zlatar
Project area: 130 m2
Project year: 2009
Construction year: 2010
Builder: Riko Hiše d.o.o

See also:

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Tellus Nursery School by Tham & Videgård	Kindergarten Sighartstein by Kadawittfeldarchitektur	Kindergarten in Granada by Solinas + Verd Arquitectos

The Method Design Lab, a collaboration between Central Saint Martins and the San Francisco-based design and innovation firm Method, launched today with the hope of driving UK economic growth and innovation. The business accelerator aims to bring up to 20 new design-centric innovations to market each year while challenging traditional innovation hubs.

Unlike other academic incubators MDL will take a design-centered, user-experience approach to innovation and will be driven solely through private capital. Investors have the opportunity to enter the MDL fund in order to acquire a share in the range of new ventures MDL will bring to market.

MDL operates a rigorous and transparent six-step process to take an idea from concept to full commercialization, which includes:

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In light of recent events at the Rhode Island School of Design, we’re not sure what to make of the latest tweet from John Maeda, the school’s president. Last week, the charismatic designer, author, and prophet of simplicity was tweeting morsels of wisdom from the TED conference—including Antonio Damasio‘s “Consciousness is what we regain when we awake from deep sleep” and Jason Mraz‘s praise of gratitude as “what gets us to the next level.” This afternoon, he took a stand on standing—and walking: “When you know your standing and know your stand,” wrote Maeda, “it’s time to walk.” This provocative koan comes in the wake of a faculty-wide “no-confidence” vote in Maeda and provost Jessie Shefrin. The motion passed 194 to 32 in a two-hour session held last Wednesday. According to Providence Journal reporter Gina Macris, “Criticism has heated up in recent months against what [RISD English professor and Faculty Steering Committee chair Mark] Sherman and others have described as Maeda’s autocratic style.” The vote of no-confidence follows the administration’s announcement of a controversial reorganization plan to combine RISD’s Division of Architecture and Design and Division of Fine Arts into a single Division of Undergraduate Studies. Meanwhile, Dean of Architecture and Design Dawn Barrett has announced that she is decamping to the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Barrett will succeed Kay Sloan as president of the Boston institution at the end of the academic year.

UPDATE: RISD President John Maeda has deleted the aforementioned tweet and replaced it with the following:

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