UNICA Campus

The vision of the project is to be a translation of the concepts that UNICA tries to transmit to its cooperative members and potential customers. An idea of sustainability, wellbeing and transparency.
The set of buildings that make up the campus behaves as a single linear building in the form of a loop that generates an infinite covered pedestrian circuit that enhances the relationship between the different uses and makes it possible to visit it in infinite configurations or modalities. At its southern end, both arms of the roof slope down to ground level, thus creating a roof that can be climbed and which can be toured and enjoyed in different ways.

This skein shape that adapts perfectly to the irregular geometry of the plot creates two courtyards that formalise two important outdoor spaces for the project. On the one hand the courtyard of the commercial and council area and on the other the large courtyard or agora surrounded by the museum, staff and laboratory buildings and which has at its heart an experimental greenhouse that acts as a great showcase for UNICA's agro-cultural power. This large greenhouse will act as a backdrop to the indoor and outdoor activities of workers and visitors.
The Gea fresh building is planned as an independent volume with its own accesses and car parks but in perfect connection with the main building and with the park and the lake that are designed on the east side of the main plot.
Each of the buildings on the UNICA campus are not only linked by a continuous roof but are also enveloped by a common exterior envelope that shades and eliminates the incidence of solar radiation on the façade of the buildings and creates an exterior diambulatory that surrounds the entire campus.
The envelope, inspired by the tensioned cable systems of greenhouses, is made of recycled injected plastic used in greenhouses and is composed of recycled plastic "links" that are inserted into the tensioned cable system that generates the external building envelope.
The plot corresponding to the farmers' area has been arranged to have the optimal size and orientation of greenhouses. These greenhouses have the size and spacing optimised to carry out the experimental work and are repeated in the same way and with the same orientation and ventilation to optimise the results of repeating the scientific method. In this area there is also a UNICA supermarket linked to the access to the Pita industrial estate, water collection tanks for use in the greenhouses, several buildings for training and visiting classrooms and an "agricultural playroom" where children can be introduced to the basics of agriculture, food and wellbeing.