"…The view of a shiny object makes us feel a little disappointed. 
The westerners use even the table, silver tools, of steel, nickel, that polish until make it shine.
 We also use kettles, cups, but we are not used to polish like they make. On the other side we like to see how a surface is getting dark and, with the time, gets totally black. There is no house where the servants has no been scold because she have polish the silver stools."



In Praise Of Shadows. Junichiro Tanizaki

We start from an orthogonal prism. A big black piece, reference from the road and easily visible inside the Campus. As a mineral, our piece is crystallizing in different stratums that hold the program and establish a future system of growing.

The building integrates in the landscape, inside a Campus with a classical line. Our building has a vocation not to match with the context, we explore in a different way of integration, trying to be different, like some industrial elements suits in the landscape [black]

We find a lot of examples in nature and in our cities of black elements as reference and integrats at the same time. A cat, a tree, a shadow, a stone, a volcano, a mine, a crow, the Osborne bull, a black rose… Symbols that suits with the medium in a different way.

On the other hand, the building opens to the user and with the cafeteria, form a public space [agora] of dialogue, of meeting, inside a huge campus without urban reference. We think in a building link between the Campus and the city of Gijon.

Historically the universities have been placed indeed of the city, in the old town, organized around several yards [Claustro]. Our proposal wants to keep this essence.