EGADE Graduate Business School
Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico
Legorreta + Legorreta

A spiraling business school atop a parking structure creates a compact symbolic form for an arid urban landscape

© Lourdes Legorreta

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

By Elizabeth Kubany

EGADE (the Spanish abbreviation for the Graduate School of Business Administration and Leadership) is part of the prominent Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, known as "el Tec." This newest campus of Mexico's premiere business school is on a 4-acre site apart from the existing Monterrey campus and directly adjacent to a large, verdant park.

The EGADE project is the first building on the campus—and the first phase of a long-range master plan (also designed by Legorreta + Legorreta) that calls for a convention center, corporate offices, retail, restaurants, and a hotel, so the school wanted it to make a grand symbolic statement.

Think of it as a snail on top of a box. The base of the poured-concrete building is a long, two-story parking garage with slots for 500 cars. Perched above it is a helix-shaped main building, which allowed the architects to create a series of public spaces that narrow from a large plaza used for public gatherings at the entrance to smaller and more intimate spaces at the end. The entire sequence culminates in a dramatic, 30-foot-high atrium, which is enclosed by a skylight.

As you enter the building from the plaza, you arrive at a 300-seat auditorium, a quarter circle in plan. The exterior of the auditorium, like the exterior walls of the rest of the building, is clad in red, 2-foot-square precast aggregate concrete panels and a local Magenta stone. A stucco finish, painted blue, covers the wall that lines the interior of the spiral. Halfway through the coiled space is the main entrance to the interior of the building and the atrium.

All the classrooms have views toward the park and the mountains, and windows are recessed into the 14-inch-thick walls to ensure that daylight enters, while interior heat gain is minimized.

Out of the center of the building rises an enlarged, rectilinear water tower, 881/2 feet high and clad in the red tile that makes the building impossible to miss.

See the December 2001 issue of Architectural Record for full coverage of this project.

Formal name of Project:
EGADE Graduate Business School egade.sistema.itesm.mx

Location:
Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico

Gross square footage:
86,111 sq. ft.

Total construction cost:
$15 million

Owner:
ITESM (Monterrey Institute of Technology for Superior Studies)

Architect:
Legorreta + Legorreta
Palacio de Versalles 285-A
Lomas Reforma C.P. 11020
Mexico, D.F., Mexico
Tel: 52 51 96 98 Fax: 55 96 61 62
Gagrisi@lmasl.com.mx
Legorret@lmasl.com.mx