The New Building for the School of Plastic Arts of the Autonomous University Benito Juárez, located in the city of Oaxaca, takes up a plot of some 13,000 square meters, close to the main access to the campus, between the space occupied by an old pelota mixteca game – used during the weekends – and an existing building that has now become the new Cultural Center of the university. Making the most of the large amounts of earth extracted during the construction of a treatment plant, an artificial slope blends the building into the environment.

The school includes sturdy prismatic buildings that go up on self-bearing stone walls measuring three meters high and that retain the slope, with free-standing volumes built with rammed earth walls that are pierced by large windows. The former accommodate the classrooms, the media library and the administration areas, whereas the latter contain the main lecture hall, a multipurpose room and the workshops, with some 80 square meters of surface facing north and flowing out onto courtyards that extend the available space. The macuiles (local deciduous leaf trees) are strategically planted to protect these areas from the high temperatures of the region...[+]