Bruno Stevens Javi Munoz Godino Jan Van den Wyngaert
The new programme for the Bacteriologic institute situated in Leuven consists of three main parts: hotel, congress centre –with an auditorium and three meeting rooms- and restaurant-brasserie for public users as well. Likewise, there are other supporting spaces such as staff area, kitchen, storage, machine rooms, director’s office and all of them joined by a communication space around the central patio. This programme is also complemented by two gardens, in addition to the patio, one in the street side, open to it, creating a public space, and the second one towards the inner part of the plot, open to the hotel users.
Concepts
Facing the rehabilitation of the Bacteriologic Institute implies a very careful lecture about its value and architecture starting from its inner spaces and the connection between them. By this way, the intervention starts working mainly as a “cleaning task�, which consists on spotlighting the strong characteristics of the building and its original value, as well as making it running again. The proposal is, indeed, a silent but also powerful way to understand the building. It is conceived as a cleaning work, by erasing the problematic elements in order to return clarity and functionality. The used strategy implies occupying the building, instead of adding new-planbuildings or altering its structure. Therefore this strategy is focused in three old spaces of the Institute that are now developed and improved, such as the void in the main building, the big and central room for investigation and the old skylight in the back.
By emptying the volume of the front building big room a new space is inserted, a big auditorium with a new hanging element above it, which opens to the sky and deals with the restoration of the original roof. This large void is now the centre of the main part of the programme in the new building.
What used to be the auditorium in the former Institute, has now become the central patio of the building. Since this is a space of high value, the proposal seeks for a new function for it, what means a new void in the middle of the building that organises all the communication and circulation around it.
Continuing with the structure of the previous skylight, it becomes now bigger and conforms a small void for the hotel, thus giving light to the corridor, different rooms and connecting the floors.
The construction process starts by erasing some elements as the two old loggias or the dilapidated roof, in order to add the new parts. The main changes in the building are the new roof, the trusses above the auditorium or the opening of the middle space in patio with garden.
New roof
Trusses for the restaurant space
Wa l l s o f t h e c o m m u n i c a t i o n s p a c e
Removal of the old roof
Fill of the basement with soil
Plans and sections
Ground floor
Section AA’
Mezzanine and communication space
Section BB’
F i r s t f l o o r, a u d i t o r i u m a n d h o t e l
T h i r d f l o o r, r e s t a u r a n t
Roof plan
Section CC’
Basement
Main elevation
Materials and building technics
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