Community Meets History At A Spanish Student Residence

Before Martín Lejarraga Architecture Office started work on Loop Homes Burjassot, a dignified block of student housing named for the Spanish town it serves, the plot where the resident hall now stands had been abandoned for a decade. An agricultural suburb of Valencia for most of its history, Burjassot had experienced radical urban change starting in the 1940’s, when a cement company established a factory complex there. In the late ’90’s, the company moved away and donated its facilities and land to the city; around the same time, a new university campus reinvigorated the otherwise-sleepy town.

Rezoned in the early 2000’s, the former factory site sprouted mid-rise apartment blocks and, on one lot, the beginnings of an office building, but the economic crisis of 2008 stopped construction in its tracks. The residential developments staggered forward—“There have been thousands of housing projects across Spain that have gone through that process,” notes architect Martín Lejarraga, principal of his eponymous firm—but the projected offices never progressed beyond the foundations, leaving nothing more than a three-story-deep concrete scar in the ground. Then, in 2022, the Madrid-based student-housing developer, RYA Residencias, acquired the plot as a raw footing for something new.

Martín Lejarraga Crafts Student Housing Inspired By Burjassot

By the time RYA brought Lejarraga on board, the architect, who is based in the coastal city of Cartagena, had been rehabilitating preexisting structures for over three decades. “Cartagena has a very interesting built heritage, so our experience here has pushed us to reform and transform lots of structures,” he explains. “Before ‘reuse’ and ‘rehabilitation’ became fashionable, it seemed interesting to me to give buildings new life.” He first worked with RYA in 2012 on a proposal for campus accommodations. (Spanish universities seldom run their own residence halls; most are built and operated by for-profit developers like RYA.) The door to a long-term collaboration opened when the company decided to transition from managing to developing student housing, creating the Loop Homes brand of dormitories, which was inaugurated in 2019 with the transformation of two 19th-century palaces in Granada.

Before taking on the Burjassot project, “We carefully analyzed all the elements that had been built—retaining walls, foundations, slabs, pillars,” Lejarraga reports. “Since it was all belowground it hadn’t suffered any deterioration.” Working within the same volume projected for the original office, Lejarraga designed a 13-level slab building around the existing structural elements, “growing the columns from the bottom up.” From there, the planning of a 120,000-square-foot, 221-room residence hall turned on the dictates of real-estate economics. “Like any developer, RYA was looking to get as much as possible out of the building, which meant looking for a balance between the private rooms and common areas,” the architect continues. “We pushed the rooms to their limit—they’re a bit monastic, though they meet every need—and so we tried to make the common areas ample, generous.” The residence, in other words, replicates the European model of urbanism wherein occupants sacrifice the private realm in favor of accessible, high-quality public space.

Ample Public Spaces Encourage Community

Spanning the top seven floors, student accommodations vary in typology—from individual and double rooms to shared, accessible, and suite-style units—but all of them compress a kitchenette, closet, and work area into built-ins along what Lejarraga terms “an active wall.” The rooftop swimming pool serves as an urban beach, as attractive as any high-end hotel’s, while on the double-height ground floor, common areas draw light and ventilation through tall banks of windows shaded by a graceful pergola connecting to the sidewalk and city outside.

Inexpensive, durable materials also played an important role in suppressing costs and extending the building’s lifespan. Corrugated steel the color of fired brick—which, Lejarraga observes, “has an industrial connotation connected to the memory of Burjassot”—appears as cladding inside and out, most notably on the ground-floor exterior and rising the full height of the blind lateral facades. Lacquered-steel paneling in the same color sheaths paired chimneylike volumes that run up both end walls—a gesture toward an adjacent smokestack that also shifts the vertical circulation of plumbing, electrical, and extraction lines off the tight floor plates. Valencia’s strong tradition of commercial ceramics provided a sustainable, low-cost solution for floors and walls in much of the interior. “In terms of service systems,” Lejarraga adds, “we decided to leave them exposed to remove an additional, unnecessary layer of finishes and expense such that the building, overall, would be more direct, raw. You can see its guts.”

Design Details Nod To Industrial Roots

Where budget-cutting exercises like these frequently lead to facilities that are blandly institutional and often inhospitable, here the use of industrial materials lends a strong sense of place and tactile warmth to both interior and exterior spaces. Thoughtful interventions throughout—undulant, perforated sheet-metal ceilings that visually lift the otherwise low overhead in the hallways; a dramatic, steel-clad spiral staircase in the reception hall—demonstrate an unusual degree of consideration for the lived experience of the building. Such measures, as Lejarraga points out, cost nothing while “offering an element of attention.” Construction may be expensive, but care is not.

MARTÍN LEJARRAGA ARCHITECTURE OFFICE: JOSE BOTÍ; FÁTIMA SAAVEDRA; PEDRO JOSÉ SÁNCHEZ; GUILLERMO NARANJO; INMA CARRERA. PM ARQUITECTURA Y GESTIÓN: CONSTRUCTION COST CONSULTANT. FLORENTINO REGALADO: STRUCTURAL ENGINEER. VALNU ENGINEERING SERVICES: LIGHTING CONSULTANT; MEP.

FROM FRONT 
RESOL: TABLES (TERRACE), CHAIRS (TERRACE, DINING HALL). OFITA: MODULAR SOFA, OTTOMAN (LOBBY). SANCAL: ROUND SOFA (LOBBY, COMMONS), HIGH-BACK SOFAS, OTTOMANS (COMMONS). FARO BARCELONA: PENDANT FIXTURES (LOBBY, DINING HALL). INCLASS: SIDE TABLES (LOBBY), TABLES (DINING HALL), DESK CHAIRS (DOUBLE ROOM). LEROY MERLIN: PING-PONG TABLE (PERGOLA). KENGURU PRO: CALISTHENICS PARK (WORKOUT AREA). ESCOFET: BENCHES (WORKOUT AREA), CUBES (POOL TERRACE). GANDIA BLASCO: CHAISE LOUNGES, CHAIRS, TABLES (POOL TERRACE). BODYTONE: EXERCISE EQUIPMENT (GYM).
THROUGHOUT
EUROPERFIL: STEEL PANELING. SAINT-GOBAIN WEBER: PLASTER. TITAN: PAINT.