Stimuli

The culture of over-stimulation is omnipresent in daily life, particularly within universities. As the film Temple Grandin illustrates, educational institutions rarely acknowledge body-minds, that perceive environmental stimuli in diverse ways.

The HIL building’s two main entrances concentrate social intensity before dispersing users into labyrinthine corridors, creating hotbeds of sensory overload. The interior typology reveals open-space workshops that generate significant noise pollution through their mixed-use function, affecting both neurotypical and neurodivergent users alike.

The spontaneous use of secondary pathways by autistic users reveals that spatial autonomy depends on the availability of diverse alternatives. The project strategy consists in transforming the building’s two wings into new heads and alternative routes that regulate the flows of access to the academy.

The new external circulation routes operate as informal refuges offering direct connection between public space and the learning environment. A new inside typology and extension are introduced where learning spaces establish a more open relationship with the outside environment, providing opportunities for withdrawal.

The new façade penetrates into the interior to introduce light and buffer spaces. Acting as a prosthetic architecture at every scale — from public space to the classroom, down to materiality itself — the care core transforms HIL’s two heads into inclusive learning entities, orchestrating a hierarchy of passages and mobilizing forms and materials to articulate movement, withdrawal and collectivity.

Master Thesis Spring 2026

Project by: Elisa Cudré-Mauroux Teaching Team: Anna Puigjaner, Pol Esteve Castelló, He Shen 何珅, Ethel Baraona Pohl, Lisa Maillard, Paule Perron, Valentina Noce. In Collaboration with Guillaume Habert and He Yufei (BUK).

Image 10: Luís Úrculo