Universal language

摘要

Translating architectural expertise from one country to another is a tricky business and when architecture plb submitted its competition entry for the economics and law faculty at the University of Lleida near Barcelona in Spain, it wasn't sure what to expect. It was in good company though: Finnish architect Kristian Gullischen is working on the same university while international practices from David Chipperfield to MBM Arquitectes have been involved in the Catalonian government's 764m (￡526m) decade-long university building programme. Well known in the UK for its carefully thought out education buildings, architecture plb had little international experience. But it had good links with Madrid-based architect Ana Ordas, who had worked in the practice's Winchester offices. She drove the competition entry and ran the job on the ground in Spain. Site meetings, held in Catalan, were made simpler by the presence of a local architect. RQP, the Spanish practice entrusted with procuring Catalonia's new university buildings, has a formal, fairly prescriptive approach. At the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya in Barcelona it asked eight architects to design their buildings in brick to create a coherent set of interconnecting streetscapes.