TIME LAYERS AND MEMORY KNOTS
We are just another generation that leans on all the previous ones, or… will future generations leans on us?
Our knowledge is just accumulated memory but… are we able to absorb so much information?
It seems like everything has been already invented, or… is it a great lie?
It seems like all we have learned is important, but is it so to a same extent?
We have all contributed something, but only some of us will remain among the layers of history, like precious stones or fossils that will de recovered in the future.
We will jump from one age to another, from layer to layer until we reach the long –awaited memory knots.
EXPANSION
The last centuries of the history and specially the 20th century, have been witnesses of a continuous expansion process: demographic, economic and cultural expansion, as well as an improvement in communications –which implies more information- during the last decades.
Bocconi University, as well as other European institutions, is a perfect example of this expansion and improvement. It had 65 students in the first academic year of 1902, 100 years later, 12400 students are registered there, being foreign students the main concern of this university nowadays.
In 1902, this university had just one building; nowadays, it counts with several buildings, it has got the most important library of Italy (EGEA), it is linked to more than 90 associated schools and it holds relationships with 250 institutions all over the world.
Its constantly expanding program of cultural and academic activities and investigation, is a prove of Bocconi’s combination of equality –being a university for a large number of students- and efficiency.
In other words, although this university used to be a fundamental element within the city of Milano, it is now an important reference, not only in Italy, but all over the world in the future.
CAMPUS
Since we do not want to give up any of these aspects, our performance can be found distributed among different time and space layers.
The campus itself goes from the classroom to a student in Memphis University, where he may be receiving information through his PC.
The campus as an abstract concept, will integrate memory as a “warehouse” of the past, diffusion of cultural activities as a commitment ground for the future.
The campus as an environment achieves the speed of contemporary life, its information nets, and its space-colonisation instruments, using them for the development of places for reflex ion, where people can rest and chill out, the kind of places that make our life easier and more comfortable.
Our concept of campus as a method, puts forward an ‘architecture of the contents’, instead of the future contents; a receptacle for memory, instead of memory contents; not the information itself, but an environment for information.
GATHERING OF IDEAS
ENVIRONMENTS AND ELEMENTS
Environments grow up, successively, around a central nucleus:
From the centre of Bocconi University, a physical, settled and deep-rooted environment, its own nets (source and condenser of the knowledge which is going to be sent) as layers that irradiate information towards the abstract, mutable and mobile place that is the internet. From more private or human spheres to more public or urban locations. Each stratum establishes a characteristic and well-defined area of influence, its limits are not so clear sometimes, though.
This is the way by which we can perform, by means of a characteristic element that can be sent to other layers nearby, in each one of the environments.
It can be said that these elements establish themselves in each stratum progressively in 2 different ways:
-From a quantitative point of view, each element reduces its presence as soon as it moves away from its “natural” location.
-Qualitatively, the formal, material or space aspects of each performance get slightly modified as we change from a layer to another.
However, there is a unitarian spirit among all these facts that leads Bocconi University towards a unique image: time layers and memory knots.
STRATUM 1 – EDUCATIONAL UTOPIA.
We are not attempting to ‘change’ the existing classrooms and spaces (something complex and maybe useless), we are just trying to give an approximate idea of what we would consider a desirable place for teaching, learning and holding relationships view of a new way of understanding the university from the inside in terms of space.
We could make a sub categorization according t 3 different (but still related, though) situations.
Places for teaching: A classroom has meaning of polyvalence and multifunctionality for us, where not only lectures can be given –we rather prefer a more human exchange between teacher and student-. The student could also de tested by means of computers, contrasting his/her thoughts with the ideas of other students in the other schools.
In order to archive this, both teacher and student should have proper tools and materials. Audiovisual equipments and connections with each student, nice furniture –which may help to create a work atmosphere- or the possibility of transforming the space available thanks to an incorporated warehouse.
Places for learning: Depots where we will store old and new knowledge, it would be the heart of the university, a place to relax with a studied treatment of natural light and exterior contact.
The central library would be custodied but available for all those who needed its services, directly in a place focused on investigation, and indirectly in a public area where people could meet each other.
Places for relations: Normally the most untidy, they are actually the places which give a social dimension to the building
These are all those places that seem to be out of the university, but they are not: halls, meetings rooms, students forums…
STRATUM 2 – GARDEN IN LAYERS
A garden as a place where past and present times meet, where people take a walk and breath some fresh air. A place to look at and to be in, to use:
Vegetal carpet: ground plane as a green carpet. Vegetation layers alternate creating several degrees of privacy and comfort, organized as levels of different characteristics.
Settled elements: Mineral materials such as stone, crystal, sand, water…
A fountain with several trays is the link between the garden and the outside.
Several hard platforms conform a location surrounded vegetation is the perfect meeting point of the garden.
Strokes: They related men with their immediate environment –seats, walls…- and with the surrounding of the garden itself –several info panels close the garden visually and open it to the rest of the world.
STRATUM 3 – FLOATING KNOTS
We want Bocconi buildings to be recipients of knowledge. We want them to be open to the world and show what is being produced inside them.
The chosen building for this aim is the new head of the university, which has been designed as a new symbol of it, as well as the main library.
Big and small memory cores will be hanging in the new building.
In this head building of the university all the study life will take place.
In this case –contrary and complementary- the recipient that receives the information (hanging outside) is the building itself, it is the way in which the world focuses on the university.
There will be light-balloons at night in the main library. Ethereal recipients of permanent knowledge . This is the way in which university focuses on the city. Those balloons are, actually, floating gardens.
STRATRUM 4 – CITY CURTAINS
We do believe that is important to differentiate the different buildings of Bocconi. We also think that those buildings have to show the activities that are taking place inside them.
We have planned a multi-layer scheme: there are some placards, on several canvasses of translucid textile, that light the buildings of the university, the street, and the information they give itself. The presence of those buildings is important during the day, but also at night. This scheme marks the containers and shows the contents, that’s the way Bocconi buildings dress in the city.
STRATUM 5 – MODULES FOR MILANO
The histories of Bocconi and Milano have been always linked. This is the right time for an exchange between any given citizen of Milano and a modern university. We want to offer places where to stay and get information to urban life.
This is a way to be present in the city by means of minimum locations. Little in space but massive in matter of information.
We choose those open spaces in the city such as parks or squares, where people cantalk, rest and think.
Three independent but linkable modules:
Media Wall: it counts with all the audiovisual equipment we need –shining panels, computers, projectors, library, music… It is some kind of wooden case which hides a technological heart.
Chillout: a crystal box, lounge in the street, a crystal unit that melts both with the park and the urban landscape. A place where you can check the information given by the Media Wall.
The Box: a place where you can focus your mind on your own thought an ideas. A dark box where we can feel isolated and safe, using our 5 senses, and individual recipient where we can experience our artistic projects.
STRATUM 6 – A TRANSPORTABLE KIT
This box is supposed to be an introduction of the university to the world. It is a container that could summarize the way Bocconi works either in congresses, fairs or cultural events, wherever they take place.
The components of this stratum are basically the same as the ones on the stratum above.
In this case, all those elements can be taken as a whole either by car, truck, helicopter, plane, ship, boat…always on Bocconi University service.
STRATUM 7 – GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
Bocconi University´s website would be an excellent way for learning and teaching at a distance. People could get information on the different courses and even following them. About its structure, we would like it to be linked to Bocconi`s digital library as well as to the different physical or virtual locations. A continuous past-future exchange.
To enter Bocconi´s website would mean entering a landscape of knowledge layers and a place inhabited by memory nucleuses.

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Proyecto: Intervención Global en Campus Universidad Bocconni, Milán.
Cliente: Universidad Bocconni.
Fecha: 2004.
Dirección: Vía Bocconi 8, Milán.
Sup. Construida: – m2.
Presupuesto: – €.