Description

Isaac Broid, in association with Alfredo Hernandez Soto, Lenin Garcia, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Reynaldo Esperanza, designed this educational facility, located approximately 190 kilometres north-east of Mexico City. The 4,300 m² building is located along the highway just 7 kilometres out of Tequisquiapan, Querétaro, on a 147-hectare stretch of ranchland and accommodates a rotating population of 1,120 students each semester. The programme for this research complex, Centro de Enseñanza, Investigación y Extensión en Producción Animal en Altiplano, comprises a wide range of functions: science laboratories, classrooms, study areas, administration, library and auditorium as well as accommodation and dining facilities. All these functions had to be condensed in the smallest possible area in order to free space for keeping animals.

The architects made the views the focus of their design agenda. thus establishing a link between the building and the context. Broid referred to the building as a viewing platform rather than as a research facility.

In fact, he applies this concept to every area of the research centre: the offices, the dormitories, the auditorium, the library, etc all are considered viewing platforms. At the same time, Broid conceived the centre as a conspicuous element in the landscape, one which encourages the appreciation of the natural surroundings but, at the same time, becomes part of such a view. Hence they have no intention to blend with the natural surroundings but to emerge as an artificial extension of it. Thus, architecture is understood as an irresolute act of negotiation between the natural and the artificial, the building and the user.

The programme was divided in four zones, each of which is housed in a separate volume: The laboratories are situated at the southernmost end of the project in a rectangular volume parallel to the street. Proximity to the street is necessary for reasons of accessibility and maintenance. The laboratories lie 3 metres below the level of the road, that way its roof can be used as a viewing platform adjacent to the road . A second larger block, oriented towards the north, contains two levels of dormitories, classrooms, study areas and the cafeteria. The dormitories are placed on the lower floors, at 10.4 and 6.95 metres below street level, forming a plinth which supports the upper floors. The cafeteria, classrooms and study areas are levelled with the laboratories (at -3 metres, i.e. below grade) so that the roof is also levelled with the road creating a perpendicular platform that extends into the horizon. The administration area is held in an orange rectangular volume which links the previous two zones of the complex. It forms an archway into the field (between the two volumes) and is pierced in the middle to create the main entrance to the complex. The fourth volume, which contains the library and the auditorium, sits perpendicularly across the classrooms and study areas in such a way that it cantilevers out on both sides. The administration block and the block containing the library and the auditorium are the only volumes that protrude above street level and interfere with the view from the road. From the bottom of the hill, however, the Veterinary Research Centre does emerge as an imposing ship-like structure which accomplishes the double effect sought by the architect: to magnify the views and to become part of them.

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Originally published in: Felipe Hernández, Beyond Modernist Masters. Contemporary Architecture in Latin America, Birkhäuser, 2009.