Lima, Peru
Dedicated program spaces are balanced with flexible areas to create a welcoming and engaging student-life facility, Sasaki Associates’ design for the Universidad of Lima campus is a new, six-story steel and concrete structure that provides space for student fitness, dining, and academic support.
The center includes nutrition, counseling, physical therapy, and weight training for athletes, as well as an informal recreation space within the multi-purpose gym, which doubles as an event space for up to 600 people.
The entire building is meant to be multipurpose; as a major engine of activity on campus, it is a place where students and faculty can gather throughout the day and socialize, study, and recharge.
Designed for users to intuitively discover places of preference, its visitors drift through its spaces participating in different scales of community activities along the way.
Across its central atrium, the building stairs and bridges connect uses and levels promoting wayfinding through alternative circulation routes, where the transparency of the spaces allows users to anticipate the many destinations that the complex offers.
The building wraps around the covered plaza space as a Möbius strip connecting different wellbeing-oriented programs.
An outdoor plaza with dining space flows seamlessly into the ground floor of this central covered plaza, drawing in circulation and passive ventilation.
The covered plaza also provides access to the campus forum, a large assembly space below the plaza surface.
The center’s student health services are located in a more discreet area to the north of the dining and retail venues.
The mezzanine overlooks both plaza and auditorium space at the building’s atrium and provides additional meeting and dining space, together with access to the student affairs offices and the entrance to the recreation programs.
The next two levels are dedicated to recreation spaces like lockers, fitness, weights, circuit training, and group exercise spaces and a connection to the renovated building wing next door with its dining area, lounges, and student flex theater spaces.
The upper levels host group exercise suites and a multipurpose gymnasium for futsal, volleyball, and basketball, all connected by an indoor and outdoor jogging track that weaves through expansive roof terraces with views of campus and the Lima skyline.
The building’s sustainability is palpable through the use of materials, natural ventilation, daylighting, and vegetation throughout its spaces, making it the highest-efficiency building structure on campus.
Combining passive and active conditioning measures and renewable energy generation the project achieves both carbon footprint optimization and target EUI 30% below the benchmark, and tracks LEED Gold certification.
Project: Universidad de Lima Recreation, Wellness, and Student Life Center
Architects: Sasaki Associates Inc.
Lead Architects: Pablo Savid-Buteler and Antonio Furukawa
Project Architects: Chris Winkler, Youngjin Lee, and Brad Prestbo
General Contractor : JE Construcciones Generales
Photographers: Eleazar Cuadros, Renzo Rebagliati, and Kevin Fu
