CEU Fernando III Library and Coffee shop

The building is installed on the site as a compact white piece resting on an openwork ribbon of ceramic masonry. Following the model of popular architecture, the construction delimits with walls a fragment of nearby land that is colonised with vegetation, water and trees. The open landscape of the olive grove, which the project proposes to extend and complete, is enlivened by a clear white architecture which is barely perforated. A small number of large, very deep hollows similarly excavate the five sides of the prism and intermediate between the exterior and the interior.

The project is organised in an extraordinarily simple way, in three independent layers and a diagonal space that crosses the building from one side to the other. The ground floor groups together all the service areas in the centre, with two open spaces at either end, each of which opens out onto a tree-lined courtyard of a different nature. In the courtyard leading to the library, located to the north and of square proportion, a plantation of lemon trees accompanies anyone approaching the entrance to the building. The southern courtyard, associated with the cafeteria, is more extensive and is arranged with a grid of orange trees and a horizontal bougainvillea that protects the large window of the cafeteria in summer.