Basque Culinary Center | VAUMM
General aspects of the proposal:
The new building of the headquarters of the Basque Culinary Center, is located on a tangent lot to the Technological Park of Miramón. This condition of proximity together with the slope dictates the starting point of this architectural proposal.
Cortesia VAUMM
On the one hand, the building should serve as an icon of the university to which it belongs, projecting to the exterior an image based on technological leadership and innovation; and on the other respecting and interacting with the low density of the residential neighborhood where it was incorporated. Given these constraints, the building takes advantage of the hillside slope to organize its functional program from top to bottom, that is, distributed public areas on the access floor (highest level) and favoring the sectors of greater specialization of the project in the lower levels of the terrain.
Cortesia VAUMM
The U-shaped building made it possible to define the interior spaces with wide areas of free circulation, fostering relations and exchange in the busy areas.
From the functional point of view, the solutions adopted allowed to organize the program in a synthetic way in two groups: one dedicated to the academic part and another to practice.
Cortesia VAUMM
The project provides for the vertical grouping of all areas of the program dedicated to the practical application of gastronomy, such as changing rooms, workshops, pre-elaboration kitchens, access to raw materials and kitchens in catering areas, so that interconnection between all of them, both for users and for providers to be direct.
Planta 0
In the distance, the building exhibits an ingenious volumetric composition, matching its scale to that of the buildings of the Miramón technological park. The coverings function as gardens for the cultivation of edible and aromatic plants, in an attempt to compensate and neutralize the presence of the building in relation to the surroundings.
Cortesia VAUMM
The building expresses its symbolic value through the work done in the kitchen – a pile of dishes in a disorderly way – following the contour lines.
Volumetric generation:
From a conceptual perspective, volumetry was generated based on the game of scales of iconic references (stacked dishes) and the building itself.
Court
Artist Robert Therrien (Chicago 1947) manipulates everyday kitchen objects like crockery, pots, and utensils to elevate to the status of works of art. It uses the concept of stacking, accumulation or multiplication of scale, moving the same objects present in everyday life to a more artistic aspect. The normality of objects contrasts with the symbolic presence they acquire in their new dimension.
Cortesia VAUMM
The same operation was considered for the exterior volumetric definition of the building, where the same Therrien dishes serve as a daily support for spaces dedicated to technological development and innovation in gastronomy. Thus a cycle is closed, through the approach of a metaphor in which the “dish returns to be the support of the gastronomy”.
This condition results in the parallelism between gastronomy and architecture, in the sense that both the chef and the architect develop their work for other people, supporting the pleasure of others, in a clear vocation to serve the client or user of the building.
Facades
The use of geometries that resemble both the pile of dishes and the softness of the waves that represent the original topography of the slope can give a unity effect to the set that serves as a fusion strategy of architecture and landscape.
Cortesia VAUMM
Datasheet:
Architects: VAUMM
Year: 2011
Built area: 15000 m²
Type of project: Educational
Status: Built
Location: San Sebastián, Spain
Team:
Architecture: VAUMM
Team Project: Marta Álvarez Pastor, Iñigo García Odiaga, Jon Muniategiandikoetxea Markiegi, Javier Ubillos Pernaut, Tomás Valenciano Tamayo
Contributors: Naroa Oleaga Barandika, PFC student, Ander Rodriguez Korta, student
