Gibraltar Guesthouse

01/07

Located right by campus of Chalmers University of Technology, Gibraltar Guesthouse provides 100 dwellings over six floors for international Master’s and PhD students. In location, design and in overall intention the project aims to not only provide shelter, but to serve as a springboard into the intense, fun and highly social life of a student.

Gibraltar Guesthouse is a wooden hybrid building combining different wood building techniques. Industrially manufactured wooden volume elements are combined with a frame of glulam and facades designed as three-dimensional facets.

The benefits of combining different wood building techniques are numerous. The construction will be efficient because much of it takes place at the factory and resources are thus released to create architecture with ambitions. In addition, wood is a good carbon sink and the most durable building material we have today.

The social aspect of being a student has guided the design of the building in its entirety, from its location right on campus to the design of integrated furniture within the individual dwelling units. In fact this social ambition even gave us the name for the feature that gives the building its surprisingly public character. ”The Social Shelf” sits at the end of the corridor and, conceived as an oversized stairwell, adds some 70 square meters of social space to each floor. On the ground floor it serves as a generous entrance space combined with common laundry facilities. The upper five floors remain to be programmed by the tenants.

The open program is reflected in the design - it really is constructed like a warehouse shelf. Nine 18 meters tall frames made of glulam were erected and then held together by wooden floor slabs. All technical installations are visible beneath the wooden ceiling. It’s a technical university, after all.

Typology	Student Housing
Size	4 500 sqm
Year	2018

Client	Chalmers Studentbostäder + Space M2
Team	Johan Olsson, Per Bornstein, Andreas Lyckefors, Viktor Stansvik, Johan Häggqvist, Petr Herman, Ainhoa Etxeberria, Angelina Kjellén
Location	Gothenburg, Sweden
Photography	Mikael Olsson