Faculty of Informatics and Electronics

Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering
The relationship of this large building intended for the departments of Computer Science and Electrotechnics of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, with the others, and with the unified set of the new Campus, Pole II of the University of Coimbra, passes, in a very evident way, through the understanding and emphasizing of the assumptions of its settlement structure, defined in the Detailed Plan of the Campus, and that the project assumes in its appropriation of the site.

In fact, through the definition of an urban "layout," the Plan denotes the concern to imprint on the geographical support the values of continuity and urban unity, and to ensure the foundational character of the new piece of city. The implantation land, with a very steep slope that reaches 40% on the western side, has a visually dominant relationship over the curved valley of the Mondego River.

The volumetric articulation of the buildings maximizes this relationship, enhancing in successive framings the perception of the geographical situation from the upper street itself. The two buildings structure similarly the functional content of their programs, with the perspective of establishing a clear delimitation of the building over the land, based on a global matrix of distributive continuity, adapted to the topography and contours of the land.

This circulatory continuity, which establishes connections between the two buildings at the level of the main atriums and at the level of the libraries beneath the staircase, aims for a significant interconnection between the two institutions (two buildings of the same department) while fully ensuring the autonomy of each.