Young Spanish architects CrystalZoo have designed an extension to the Seu University of La Nucia, an external site of the University of Alicante in La Nucia, Spain.

The two-storey extension wraps around one wing of the existing college building and includes a new reception area and cafeteria.

Photographs by Guillermo Luijk and Crystalzoo Studio.

The following text is from the architects:

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Seu University of La Nucia.

The building is an external seat of the University of Alicante. It is placed in La Nucia, a small town of the province of Alicante near Benidorm.

The building has a meeting point, internet access, workshops and classrooms. The University uses it for offering courses and information programs in cities or towns that are distant to the Campus.

The site is a neuralgic centre of the social activity of La Nucía; in which different circulations converge (new audience, municipal children school, future residence of students and access to old town), vectors of action, relation and vision that generate their own game board (topology) and the rules that will mark future mutations. This is an unfinished system, able to adapt to future necessities or programs and to lodge the new facilities.

The building simultaneously conserves its identity and breaks its walls to open the interior of the building to the old patio creating dynamic spaces. Those vectors define inner zones that invite to the culture and tranquillity and relate the spaces with other exteriors to favour social interchange and response to the landscape elements.

Our proposal is not designed to resemble his environment. Establishing a dialogue with the old school San Rafael, puts it in value, their architectures are different and speak with the greatest of time.

We raised flexibility as temporary approaches, such as liberalization of the old architectural legacies, as a way of interventionist approach to heritage. In this way, we avoid having dead city, trying to create dynamic environments, with greater capacity to manage the environment in which they are located.

Architect: Jose Luis Campos Rosique
CrystalZoo Studio, Alicante, Spain.