In Lima, Peru, UTEC needed a new University. They held an international architectural competition. With globalisation, sameness obliterates uniqueness. Each place on earth has unique co-ordinates, history, traditions and culture. Lima is a city build on a desert, 12 degrees south of the Equator. A cold current which comes up the Peruvian coast from Antarctica keeps the city’s climate at a pleasant temperature of between 55 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit. The annual rainfall in Lima is one-third of an inch. There are 40 m high cliffs onto the Pacific Ocean that define the edge of the city. The site for the new University is in a type of valley, which leads up from the ocean road. The north side of the site is bounded by a busy motorway, while the southern boundary adjoins a residential district, called Barranco. Researching what UTEC needed, we imagined a man-made ‘cliff’, positioning its structure along the motorway, to be visible to passing traffic and to register the campus in the public mind. We positioned the larger volumes of the laboratories on the lower levels, with the smaller teaching spaces and administration on upper levels. The roofs of lower spaces become cascading gardens. These roofs not only provide outdoor landscaped spaces, reminiscent of the cultivated terraces of Machu Picchu and those around Lake Titicaca, but modulate the form of the new vertical campus to the scale of the adjoining residential area to the south. We imagined a University as an Arena for Learning.

ACTUACIÓN