Project idea
The inner courtyard of the university, where the project is located, is surrounded by large green areas such as the Námestí slobody square, the namestie Kollarovo and Avionsky Parcik squares and the Medicka Zahrada garden. The main concept idea of the project is the creation of a green inner courtyard, which will become a continuation of the city’s green corridor and form a new pedestrian transit through the university courtyard. This path will be psychologically comfortable for citizens to walk and will rid the courtyard of its sacred and inaccessible status.
The key point to creating the transit is to saturate it with public functions. Townspeople will be able to peek into the activities of the research center through the view windows located in the courtyard and the glass partitions in the building. In addition, it provides an opportunity for occasional interaction between citizens and the university, thus eliminating the need for a purposeful visit to the university.
The spatial idea is to form a green hill and a simple rectangular volume overhanging it and letting the transit underneath. This solution makes it possible to preserve the courtyard in its entirety without breaking it up into parts, but to form a coherent street space, attractive for recreation, communication and street events.
The expressiveness of the technique is achieved by the natural and material – the hill and the simple form. It is also succinctly integrated into the building system of the university, creating a soft natural environment rather than being at odds with it.
The main functional idea is to create a visual openness of the laboratories and their location in visual accessibility for citizens. The labs of the research center and the exhibition space are placed in such a way that visitors can freely observe the activities of the center through the second light of the labs and the view windows in the street.
The overhanging volume concentrates the function of the university use which are naturally separated from the public urban functions by the resulting gap-transit betweеn the hill and volume. It is also connected by bridges to the university faculty buildings.

Materials idea
The idea behind the materials is layering. The interior courtyard is finished with eco-tiles which allow precipitation into the ground and grass outwards. Together with the hillside, it forms a seamless fabric of greenery that unites the entire courtyard. The paths are made of wooden decking, which is just as permeable. Cut-outs in relief, observation windows on the hill and connecting bridges are made of rusted metal, which contrasts with the greenery emphasising its shape.
The outer walls of the rectangular volume are made entirely of glass, overlaid with sheets of perforated metal in white. This metal emphasises the geometricity of the volume and also protects the rooms from the southern light.

Project description
The designed object can be roughly divided into three layers - the hill, the outdoor space on the hill, and the standing volume on the legs.
Under the hill there are the main public functions oriented towards the citizens' visit: exhibition and multifunctional spaces, a café, an info zone, a universal lecture hall, capable of being transformed into a workshop space. Its entrances are oriented towards the existing courtyard passageways along Namestie slobody and Radlinskeho Street.
It also located the laboratories and workshops of the research center, which can be viewed through the glass walls of the public spaces. In order to create privacy, communication between the laboratories takes place on a separate floor, and visual access from the public spaces is gained through the second light of the laboratories.
The spaces below the hill are illuminated by daylight through cut-outs in the sloping terrain, as well as through some of the view windows located on it. The surface of the hill forms a coherent street space and the natural environment of the courtyard. Its slopes naturally act as amphitheatres and can also be used for recreation. Against the volume of the existing auditorium there is a main street amphitheatre with seating, whose stage is covered by a green roof with circular openings. The triangular roof is supported by three cylindrical volumes, which form spaces of varying degrees of privacy and use around them. The atrium of the SvF Faculty is underlain by an undercroft which creates a connection to it and incorporates it into the courtyard system. There is a diagonal transit across the hill, as well as a connection to the roof of the FCHPT faculty lecture hall volume. The roof is used as a terrace for the research center. It has a separate entrance to the overhanging research center volume. There is also an elongated glass volume on the hill, which is the main vertical communication and entrance area of the research center. There is a lobby, an info zone, a cloakroom and a café.
The rectangular volume, which is placed on legs above the hill, has a simple form with different-scale through-holes that illuminate the spaces of the research center, the outdoor spaces of the hill and its rooms. There are classrooms, a lecture hall for 200 people, co-working rooms, conference rooms, the rector's office, a media library, a start-up center and various relaxation areas. The volume is represented by two floors with various holes forming a second light.
Total squares
Building – 14300m2
Underground parking – 9150m2
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Research + start-up – 5520m2
Rectorate – 400m2
Start-up administration – 140m2
Recreation – 410m2
Invite zone + info-zone, hall – 520m2
Caffee + kitchen – 810m2
Lab storage + technical background – 1175m2
Public entertainment, exhibition, multipurpose space – 1360m2
Underground parking – 9150m2
Research + Start-up:
Classroom – 1510m2
Lecture hall – 465m2
Conference-room – 144m2
Coworking/open-space – 770m2
Library – 500m2
Laboratory – 885m2
Workshop + studios – 700m2
Start-up rent office – 550m2

Technical information
The facility is designed as a frame system, represented by columns and a caisson slab. The pitch of the columns is 18x18 meters with cantilevers of 6 meters. The cell of the caisson is 1x1 meter and its height corresponding to the step of 18 meters is 0.65 meters. The columns are round and have a diameter of 0.5 meters. The parking under the building has a column spacing of 6x6 meters and covered with a 0.3 meterss thick monolithic reinforced concrete slab.

Co-authors
Associate Professor of Kharkiv School of Architecture Alexander Kolesnikov