Faculty of Fine Arts, University of La Laguna

Located in a heterogeneous area, on the periphery of the University Campus and adjacent to the island highway, the new Fine Arts School presents itself as an extension of the Campus’s public space, while creating an autonomous interior landscape of its own.

A skin of suspended concrete slats adopts a curved shape which develops on the different levels protecting and wrapping the open space of the building.

Campus circulation is collected and guided by a public plaza that extends through the main entrance and is transformed into a spacious terrace overlooking the inner courtyard. From the main entrance, circulation is continuous, following half-open, undulating corridors.

The teaching areas are distributed along these corridors. Adding to classrooms with mobile dividing walls are multiple spaces like the patio-gardens and open ramps, the covered galleries and the entrance terrace, conceived as open exhibition and teaching areas, innovative spaces for an experimental and creative education.

GPY Arquitectos (Tenerife, Canary Islands) is formed by Juan Antonio González Pérez, Urbano Yanes Tuña and Constanze Sixt. In the insular context, we understand architecture as a spatial search for new forms of relating the human being with his surroundings, dissolving the limits between interior and exterior, public and private, urban and territorial.
We have a special interest in public buildings, thought of as a sequence of social spaces related to the city and the landscape. Our challenge is to propose imaginative solutions to the real problems of our society.

The studio has received a number of high-profile awards in recognition of its work. In 2003 GPY won the International ar Awards of Emerging Architecture and the Silver Medal at the Miami + Beach Biennial. That same year the studio was nominated for the European Union's Contemporary Architecture Prize Mies van der Rohe and in 2008 for the Iakov Chernikhov International Prize. In 2009 GPY won the Experiencia/Futuros: Mi obra favorita (Experience/Futures: My Favorite Work) Award of the Higher Council of Architects in Spain (CSCAE) for its work on the Tenerife Centre of Dramatic Arts, a project that was also featured at the exhibit 'On-Site: New Architecture in Spain' at the MoMA in New York and at the 'Spanish Architecture 1975-2010. 35+ Building Democracy' group show in Athens, Nicosia and Madrid.
GPY Arquitectos’ projects have been published in numerous publications such as the Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture, 1000xEuropean Architecture, 10x10_2.100 Architects 10 Critics.