Architects: Guillermo Vasquez Consuegra Arquitecto
Year: 2024
Photography: David Frutos, Javier Orive
Lead Architect: Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra
Quantity Surveyors: Marcos Vázquez Consuegra, Cayetano Martínez Mas
Construction Management: Elena L. Ariza
Project Coordinators: Alberto Altini y Pedro Hébil
Team Project: Joao Alves, Borja Dorado, Filippo Pambianco, Marcin Sapeta, Kathia González, Nicholas Paul Veint, Alessandro Tessari, Marko Jovanovic, Luca Magagni, Elena L. Ariza, Davide Fuser, Alessia Boldrin, Antonella Carlucci, Valerio Vigoni
Client: University of Alicante
Program / Use / Building Function: Business Centers, College and Universities
City: Alicante
Country: Spain
Alicante University Entrepreneurship Centre, designed by Guillermo Vazquez Consuegra, in Alicante, Spain, partially completed after a ten-year delay, is a U-shaped building featuring office-laboratory modules, common areas, and a green corridor connecting it to the main campus. Completed in 2024, this project emphasizes flexible spaces and passive thermal regulation.
After ten years of hibernation – the project was drafted between 2007 and 2009 – the University of Alicante has constructed only a part of the Business Creation Centre, equivalent to half of the building. Therefore, a large part of the building still awaits construction in a second phase with no start date, which will complete and properly contextualize the building.
The Entrepreneurship Centre is one of the first facilities to occupy the vacant land of the University of Alicante Science Park, separated from the University Campus by the A7 motorway to Valencia. A green pedestrian corridor crossing under the motorway will connect the two university campuses.
The functional program includes office-laboratory modules for science and technology-based companies, with versatile and flexible spaces equipped with complex installations. These facilities are crucial in the formal and spatial organization of the building.
The project’s formal layout is a U-shaped building, where the connection between the two arms forms the main body housing the center’s common areas, such as the foyer, auditorium, cafeteria-restaurant, and service areas for business laboratories. This slender, excavated piece emerges from the zigzagging green corridor. The two parallel arms house the laboratories, administration, and training rooms, enclosing a long, narrow, landscaped courtyard, serving as a large container for installation ducts, hidden behind slender lattices of angular aluminium louvres. Lightweight metal ladders climb between the walkways, ensuring proper use and maintenance.
The project focuses on the circulation and access spaces to the laboratory modules, forming a large cantilever on the main façade facing the green corridor, which characterizes its interior space and the building’s image.
Beyond their role as transit spaces, these galleries are shaped into living and relationship spaces, with varying dimensions and characteristics, open to the future lush vegetation outside. They also serve as a passive thermal regulation system. A linear succession of small courtyards crosses all levels, and movable louvres on each floor control the air intake from outside.
In winter, these louvres remain hermetically closed, transforming the galleries into buffer spaces with a higher temperature than the outside, minimizing heat loss. In summer, opening the louvres creates a chimney effect, letting hot air pass through the courtyards and dissipate through the roof. At night, the louvres open automatically, renewing the space with cooler air. This efficient passive thermal regulation system acts as the building’s bioclimatic engine.
Project Gallery
Project Location
Address: University of Alicante, San Vicente del Raspeig, Alicante 03690, Spain
Location is for general reference and may represent a city or country, not necessarily a precise address.
