Arquitectos/Architects:
Enrique Tallés - Tomás Solano

Instituto de Neurociencias. Alicante        Neuroscience Institute. Alicante

En un solar largo y estrecho, condicionado por la escasez de suelo edificable en el Campus, el edificio se desarrolla en cinco niveles. El sótano aloja parte de la maquinaria al servicio de las complejas instalaciones que requiere el Instituto, y reservas de espacio para absorber futuros usos. Con objeto de facilitar la ventilación natural y la entrada de luces al sótano, la rasante del forjado de planta baja se despega del terreno en un clima caracterizado por inundaciones estacionales.

El desnivel se aprovecha para establecer el acceso, moldeando la rasante con suaves curvas que desembocan en esa cota. La formación de pendientes a ambos lados, permite crear bolsas de tierras que soportarán los espacios ajardinados que acompañarán el tránsito hacia el interior del edificio y hacia los otros de su entorno inmediato. Para potenciar la comunicación entre ellos, la planta baja  se fractura e interrumpe, orientándose el vacío así creado con el eje de entrada del edificio del actual Decanato de Medicina y Biblioteca General del Campus. El espacio liberado permite un porche cubierto y transitable que, en esa planta baja, soluciona los accesos y aloja los espacios de administración y los vinculados a todos los grupos de trabajo (aula, salón de actos, etc).

An inverted concrete U covers two parallel tablets of equal length, crossed perpendicularly by three shorter ones. Spaces for the vertical movement of people and services are placed at the centre of their crossing-points, which alternate with courtyards. The laboratories and facilities shared by different research groups are distributed in the remainder. Two walkways on each level, one open and one covered, help to connect the two longer tablets.

In a long, narrow plot, constrained by the lack of building land on the Campus, the building is laid out on five levels. The basement holds part of the machinery serving the complex equipment the Institute requires and has space in reserve to absorb future uses. To let natural ventilation and light into the basement, the ground floor slab is raised above the ground, in a climate noted for seasonal flooding.

The change in height is used to mark out the access, moulding the ground into gentle curves that lead up to this level. The slopes that are formed on both sides enable pockets of earth to be created for the landscaped spaces that accompany the routes into the interior of the building and towards the other buildings in its immediate surroundings. To foster communication between them, the ground floor is fractured and interrupted. The void this creates is aligned with the entrance to the building that currently houses the Medical Faculty Deanery and the main campus library. The freed space provides a covered walk-through porch that, at this ground floor level, holds the entrances and the administration and other spaces linked to all the working groups (lecture hall, assembly hall, etc.).

Situación/ Location:
Campus Universidad Miguel Hernández, San Juan. Alicante/ Miguel Hernández University, Sant Joan Campus (Alicante)

Promotores/ Developers:
Universidad Miguel Hernández/ Miguel Hernandez University

Consellería de Sanitat/ Valencia Region Health Ministry
C.S.I.C./ Spanish Research Council

Contratista/ Contractor
OHL

Dirección obra/ Executive team:
Enrique Tallés - Alfonso Casares

Ingeniero Instalaciones/ Installations engineer:
Joaquín Orejón

Fotógrafo/ Photographer:
Pablo Casares

Desde el punto de vista paisajístico, el Instituto se integra en la arquitectura de su entorno universitario. Se configura como una prolongación del próximo Edificio de Departamentos, limitándose a continuar el eje que crea el bulevar que tienen delante y al que ambos orientan sus fachadas principales, enfrentadas a la del Hospital. Mantiene relaciones de distancia con las zonas de paso más consolidadas facilitando los tránsitos entre los edificios circundantes y contribuyendo, con la fractura de su porche transitable, a los accesos hacia ellos y hacia las zonas de aparcamiento, cafetería y otras instalaciones del Campus.

Recurre a una arquitectura fundamentalmente neutra cuyo carácter radica en el ritmo de la repetición, en la sencillez de las soluciones materiales, y en la ausencia de primacía de unos elementos   morfológicos sobre otros. El gesto dinámico más destacado lo constituye el movimiento impreso en la disposición, alterna en la vertical, de las ventanas más patentes de la fachada E frente a la opuesta, arropada por el edificio del Decanato y orientada a grandes extensiones de aparcamiento y a la carretera. Un volumen limpio, blanco y terso, que busca desmaterializarse con los reflejos de la celosía metálica de sus fachadas y mimetizarse con el fondo de los edificios próximos.

The two main façades (E and W) are protected on the exterior by a screen (perforated sheet metal, normally used as grilles for industrial ceilings) that envelops them like a skin, filtering the rays of the sun. The additional cost of this screen is justified by its benefits in a very sunny climate such as that of Alicante: it tempers the effect of thermal inertia, shades the interior spaces by cutting the passage of light by 50% (most pronounced precisely with the height of the summer sun), creates a chamber between itself and the façade that encourages the flow of natural ventilation and houses gangways that make it easier to maintain the exterior of the building.

From the landscape point of view, the Institute is integrated into the architecture of its campus surroundings. It forms a prolongation of the nearby Departments building, confining itself to continuing the axis created by the boulevard on which their main façades are placed, opposite that of the Hospital. It keeps its distance from the more consolidated areas of transit, facilitating movement between the surrounding buildings and, through the break of its walk-through porch, contributing to the accesses both to these and to the car park areas, cafeteria and other campus facilities.

It resorts to a basically neutral architecture, basing its character on the rhythm of repetition, simple materials and an absence of emphasis on certain morphological aspects rather than others. Its most prominent dynamic gesture is the movement created by the vertical alternation of the most noticeable windows on the east façade, compared to their arrangement on the west side, which is shielded by the Deanery building and faces onto large car parking areas and the main road. The clean, taut, white block seeks to dematerialise with the reflections of the metal screen on its façades and to blend in to the background of the neighbouring buildings.

Bands of bright colours run longitudinally along the second skin of the two longer faces. The colours are closely linked to the intimacy of the building: toned down by the metal screen, they are only hinted at from the exterior. Within the building, the variety of colours on the corridors parallel to the façades have symbolic referential value, helping the unitary atmosphere of this space to be reencountered from any point. The play on transparency in courtyards, walkways and corridors underlines their three-dimensional character and helps the interior order to be visualised through an automatic exercise of symmetrical reconstruction.