THE LEARNING FACTORY | WNA Walter Nicolino Architects

The new headquarters of the “Institute of Applied Art and Design – IAAD.” are located in Bologna (Italy), in a early twentieth century complex along the railway: the former Ovidio Vignoni factory. 

The spaces, due to their past use linked to the artisan and production sector in the field of hand-decorated tiles, are characterized by large zones with a marked verticality, which the expansion project has maintained and enhanced. Beneath its ripples, the pitched wooden roof creates like a covered square with a program open to the various activities of the university.

More than half of the large spaces at ground level host adaptive open classrooms and shared areas,  integrated with closed standard classrooms. The flexible study and exhibition spaces, characterized by reconfigurable walls and mobile furniture, are part of the connective space where users can meet and interact. Large internal windows allow visual connections between the people involved in various didactic activities.

Most of the activities take place on the ground floor, in continuity with the external spaces of the city. The small height differences between the various zones are connected by a system of ramps, that draw on the industrial imagination and are placed in the spaces as points of reference and orientation. There are 3 mezzanines for specific functions such as offices and meeting rooms, connected by 3 iconic staircases.

 The change in urban use of the new spaces requests an anti-seismic structural adaptation of the entire structure: a new steel frame layer integrates the existing brick walls and the wooden roof, creating new geometric and material relationships with the existing.

From the Ovidio Vignoni hand-decorated tiles factory, to the factory of learning on applied arts - The IAAD Learning Factory is a flexible complex informed by innovative teaching, carried out in a large and adaptable shared environment. A contemporary university playing the role of a civic center for the local community with an open program of activities, as natural complement of the didactic experience.