IED MACSON

Type Completed // Direct commission from Istituto Europeo di Design (IED)

Time lapse First phase: june 2008-september 2009 // Second phase: january 2010-september 2011

Numbers Final cost: 3,8 mln € // Total area: 5300 m2

Team Alessandro Scarnato (in charge for the overall design and the construction of the first phase) // FGArchitects (construction of the second phase) // ProA Solutions (accessability and design consultant)

The building is an old factory with a solid structure of brick and iron. The space, huge and bright, is open in fluid continuity through all levels. The architectural action is stronger on the courtyard, connected to the surrounding system of squares in the Barcelona neighborhood of Gràcia.  

The interior is organized through a distributional tool for a school where the main formative moment is not the lesson, but the interaction between people. In the first and second floor, a system of cabinets optimizes the use of surface thanks to an articulated profile, broken by niches and transparent cuts. The top of the cabinets contains the air conditioning ducts. There are no conventional classrooms and no corridors: only a dialogue between open areas and modular subdivisions. The transversal part of the building is a  wide Open Space: is the internal repetition of the court, and therefore of the square, at every level.

The project intentionally refuses to appear as finished and unchangeable. The project will, by contrast, create the conditions where creativity can be expressed at the operational use of space, leaving the possibility to reinvent the teaching also reorganizing the logistics, putting hands on the interior as in a constant changing installation: following a cloth rather than altering a work over. The strength of the proposal lies in its uncertainty and its being an editable instrument of use.

Here you have a video render:

NUEVA SEDE IED EN YOU TUBE