Learning Landscapes: A Lecture Building for Piura University by Barclay and Crousse

The Universidad de Piura Lecture Building, in Peru, surpasses the banal condition the program presupposes: that of a mere repetition of lecture rooms. The articulation of this group of buildings within the building is, rather, a complex architectural organism reconciling climate and inhabitability. It is a vital form, capable of absorbing and mitigating the inclement conditions of the equatorial desert, which is thus transfigured into domestic oases, shelters and shared spaces. The Barclay & Crousse Lecture Building is, above all, a citadel that embodies the will to give substance to a primordial idea of settlement.