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Annex of the University of Oulu Department of Architecture
2003
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Design: Claudia Auer and Niklas Sandås
The Department of Architecture is located in central Oulu, within the Empire Style grid plan area that was created after the great fire of 1822. The requirement was that the new building should merge well with the other, over hundred-year-old, buildings of the listed city block.
The extension, Workshop A, houses teaching and storage facilities as well as a large lecture hall, exhibition space, offices and a cafe. A cross-plan interior street subdivides the building into four parts, and this division is repeated in the roof shapes both outside and indoors. The architecture emphasises the structural clarity, simplicity of detailing and neutrality required of a backdrop for creative work. The material palette aims at authenticity and workshop-like ruggedness.
The building has two floors. The ground floor comprises four concrete boxes, and on top of them is the first floor, which has a glulam timber structure. The walls of the interior street are of fairfaced concrete cast in a shuttering of horizontal boarding. The glulam frame of the first floor has been left exposed. Rigid joints were specified at the joints of the perimeter columns and the ridge joints of the rafters, so other structural members were not required for rigidity. In this way, the strength properties of the glulam structure could be fully utilised. In the interior all the timber parts have been treated with a translucent coating. The wooden floors have been treated with wood oil. The facade is clad with thick, tongued and grooved spruce boards painted with traditional, linseed oil based paint.
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