REFURBISHMENT OF BUILDING FOR A CENTRE FOR INNOVATION IN VOCATIONAL TRAINING
In 2019 we were commissioned to refurbish the old building of the Mariñamansa Home School in Ourense to convert it into a large container that could house all kinds of activities related to research and innovation in vocational training and a space where to establish relationships between private companies and the different areas of vocational education.
The Home School was a student residence attached to the Mariñamansa school, which during the school year housed some 300 students from rural areas far from the school and the children of emigrants.
The original building, constructed in 1970, was the work of the Madrid architects Emma Ojea and Walter Lewin and had been abandoned for a decade.
Before starting the project, a detailed structural and constructional analysis of the existing building was carried out to determine the viability of its use for the new proposed use, and it was considered technically feasible to maintain the external enclosures, all its openings and the metallic structure of the building by previously reinforcing all the existing floor slabs, the beams with the largest spans and some pillars, to meet the conditions of strength and deformation required by current regulations.
The main strategies adopted when tackling the refurbishment project were as follows:
1.| Demolish the inclined fibrecement and tile roofs added to the original building in 1988 to install an extensive green roof
throughout the building with integrated irrigation and rainwater recovery for its use. A 35 kW photovoltaic installation for self-consumption compatible with the green roof will also be incorporated.
2.| Construction of two new vertical communication cores attached to the existing building to improve the interior circulations of the
building and make its configuration more legible for the user.
3.| With the aim of achieving 4 work areas with a larger surface area, it was decided to link the existing arms on the ground floor.
These occupied patios, with their green roof, generate gardens directly related to the classrooms on the first floor.
4.| Once the ground floor courtyards are covered and the communication cores are established, 4 work areas similar in surface,
shape and possibilities of interior configuration and complete and independent provision of facilities are obtained.
5.| The ground floor houses the more industrial work areas and those activities that require heavy machinery or greater height. All
these workshops have independent accesses from the outside that allow vehicles to be brought in.
- On the first floor are located those work areas more related to teaching and research, such as classrooms and laboratories, as well as meeting, relationship and rest areas. Fixed and mobile diaphanous divisions are used, depending on the needs, and large circulation areas are created, leaving intermediate spaces that can be converted into informal meeting rooms and meeting spaces facing outwards. 7.| The facilities and their layout play a transcendental role in the adaptability and flexibility of a building of these characteristics. The strategy chosen to guarantee this flexibility consists of allowing the 4 large work areas of the building to have a generous independent technical core, formed by concrete screens, through which the layout of all the installations required by each area, now and in the future, run. These cores run vertically from the ground floor to the technical area on the roof floor, allowing the extension of the installations and the introduction of new ones if necessary. These 4 cores communicate horizontally on each of the floors. To establish as a priority the improvement of the building's energy demand through high thermal insulation and highly efficient installations, achieving an A energy rating and a non-renewable primary energy consumption of only 23.3 kWh/m2.year, a very low value for a building of these characteristics. This project aims to propose, under sustainability criteria, a response to the necessary revitalisation and recycling of our obsolete or disused buildings, without the need to continue building anew and completely forgetting our past.
