BEOGRAD, Serbia and Montenegro

CENTRE FOR PROMOTION OF SCIENCE

Concorso Internazionale di progettazione per la costruzione di Un Centro di Promozione delle Scienze a Belgrado

main entrance view

CONCEPT The new centre for promotion of science will be a big glass-box of 150×30x15 meters that will protect the activities that will be hosted inside. Flexible spaces will be realized by movable walls and curtains sliding on rails and tense wires and they will disappear in gaps positioned inside the “office” area. Shell-like semi-transparent boxes hold the main functions and they will be floating in the space, hanged on the thick reticular structure of the roof. A loop path made out of ramps will link them. Building orientation will help in collect solar energy. The main facade is south-west oriented and has a large surface of capturing glass with a double system of shading: an overhang roof that will protect mainly during summer and a “green” screen made out of iron wires weaved that support a plant barrier on three sides. The climbing plant will be a deciduous kind so that it will let sun in during winter period when the ray of sunshine is lower on the horizon. The greenhouse effect will heat the air mainly during the period of activity of the building, morning and afternoon, accomplish a valuable energy conservation. During summer instead the green curtain filters the light decreasing the radiant heating and keeping the internal comfort condition. The north-northeast facade is completely “insulated” by anartificial dune under which is located the parking area and the loading/unloading area. This green hill that lays on the building is both an insulation system and a soundproof barrier against the intense noise produced by the traffic in the street. Along the surface of the hill there are several skylight and ventilation chimneys, providing natural light and fresh air to the building. The rooftop is a wide energy accumulator. The whole surface is a photovoltaic skin capable to capture a great amount of solar energy and to exploit it for the Centre’s functions. The building is a communication machine. The transparent skin allows to perceive the activities and the events that are taking place inside the Centre. The inside works as an “organism” in which cells are connected among them by paths that operates as synapsis. As a sinusoidal ribbon of DNA spiral, the system of the ramps brings the visitors from the main lobby through the different levels, telling the story of the science across the different thematic areas, the planetarium, the laboratories, the conference hall to finally arrive at the terrace level on the science garden. A wide LED screen, powered by solar energy produced on the rooftop, is integrated in the overhanging roof facing the highway and it shows the only visible part of the building trough which the Centre for Promotion of Science communicates with continuous flows of images and news of the activities performed inside. The site is designed with ecological criteria. Green stripes of variable dimensions divide the entire surface. Among those stripes new buildings of the campus of art and science grow up. Their position has been studied with the aim of reducing at the most the problem of the shading between them and so to have the best radiant heating. Along the stripes new pedestrian and bicycle paths stretch as tree’s branches connecting every building and creating areas for parking lot, realized with a permeable paving.

VISION The building is on three levels, completely connected by a system of ramps that allows a complete continuity and accessibility to the spaces. In the wide space of the ground floor there are a bookshop, the reception, the temporary and the permanent exhibition. Flexible spaces can be diversified by movable walls and curtains sliding on rails and tense wires. The subdivision system becomes the support to multimedia projections, dedicated to the different thematic areas and it can be moved or collect entirely in a special space at the change of exhibition’s needs. In each level a wide stripe on the north side contains all the services related to the function of the floor, such as the emergency stairs and exits, the storage rooms for materials and equipment, the offices and special class-rooms. Inside the large and mostly empty volume some floating elements contain the main functions: the planetarium, the laboratories, the conference hall and the restaurant that gets out of the glass-facade projecting onto the science garden with whom its linked by a external ramp covered by the rooftop. In this way the restaurant can be completely independent and can be connected to the tower of the Science Institute and to the paths inside the park. During the night the LED screen communicates to the highway and the bright boxes float inside the wide space of the Centre of the Science.

Masterplan

PROCESS According to the mechanical features of the soils the structure has been laid on a plateau foundation avoiding the creation of underground spaces. The parking area sticks to the inside floors and it will allow a possible transformation of the parking in a future expansion of the exhibition area. The building is completely hide by the artificial hill that preserve the presence of vegetation and trees and it allows a great soundproofing from the close highway. The research buildings and the faculties have the possibility of additions in the adjoining areas and increasing the number of the storeys reflecting the need expressed by the competition brief.

Landscape

level 0

level +1

level +2

south elevation

east elevation

north elevation

cross section

Europaconcorsi Beta

CENTRE FOR PROMOTION OF SCIENCE