bevk perović arhitekti

gebouw O faculty building

gebouw O faculty building

competition entry, 2nd prize

in collaboration with B-architecten

address: Antwerpen, Belgium

client: Universiteit Antwerpen

programme: faculty building

project: 2012

Bevk Perović project team:

Matija Bevk

Vasa Perović

Tina Marn

Christophe Riss

Radim Louda

Andrej Ukmar

Ida Sedušak

Irene Salord

Located on the periphery of Antwerp, a campus of the University of Antwerp needs a new ‘centre’, a new building comprising of lecture halls and lab facilities only, to be shared by all of the university departments simultaneously.

The location for Gebouw O (Building O) is almost in the geometric centre of the campus, touching upon the bicycle/pedestrian spine, a path connecting all of the faculties of the campus. A line of old, large poplar trees transverses the location, splitting it in half.

Building O becomes a literal ‘centre’ of the campus, a circle, visible only from the air in its totality, half building and half square, with the line of poplar trees acting as a ‘screen’ for its fully glazed elevation.

A melon-like shape of the building, essentially an accumulation of lecture halls, is wrapped along the exterior by an undulating mirror-polished metal façade and a series of large cantilevering terraces to be simultaneously used as terraces for breaks between lectures and fire escape routes if necessary.

The front façade, completely open, but shaded by existing old trees, is a ‘picture’ of the life of the building, of the students waiting for the lectures to start, facing the large open plaza, the central square of the university, its new ‘heart’.