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65 apartments in the site of former Pirelli factory in Vilanova i la Geltrú

The design for the apartment buildings at Vilanova i la Geltru consists of four buildings running from the newly created Placa Mediterrania to Carrer de Ferrer I Vidal. Wrapping the public facades of the buildings, a 90cm thick ‘wall’ unites the four components and gives a strong architectural expression. The ‘wall’ is composed of pre-cast concrete panels in three tones, utilised as large building blocks placed upon one another and giving a powerful tectonic. The ‘wall’ is punctuated by openings of various sizes – in some places the glass is flush to provide windows, in others it is recessed to create loggias, and where the buildings face open space the concrete elements project to form balconies. The composition of the building blocks and openings establishes a play of projection and reveal, light and shadow. As part of the Masterplan for the ‘Espai Pirelli’, the buildings are at a pivotal position between the new Placa Mediterrania and the old town. The ‘wall’ is allowed to follow the perimeter of the site, and so mediates between the orthogonal arrangement of the Masterplan and the more fragmentary nature of the existing built fabric. Two of the buildings face the Placa Mediterrania, giving enclosure to the space, with an entrance between them. The concrete blocks and large openings give a sense of scale and proportion to the Placa. At the far end, two further buildings are carved back to create an entrance from the old town into the new area. Throughout the project commercial activities use the ground floor spaces, with apartments in the floors above. The ground floor level gradually steps down across the site to meet the changes in level. The first and second pair of buildings are joined by a single storey block, above which the ‘wall’ cuts back to bring light and air to the apartments, and create large spaces for roof terraces. The entrances to the apartments are expressed on the ground floor with deep reveals, internally lit and lined with steel panels, differentiating them from the commercial spaces. Internally, the project uses simple materials to create calm and elegant living spaces. The communal areas are lined with timber panels, and steel handrails are used on the staircases. Where possible, internal courtyards are used to bring light to the communal space and give a focus to the buildings. The roofs of the buildings are designed to serve as both private and communal terraces. The apartments themselves are arranged to give generous and open living spaces. Again, simple materials are used – timber floors, white marble in the kitchens and bathrooms, white walls. The 90cm ‘wall’ zone is used to provide both open shelving and closed cupboards, integrating the storage into the building itself. A balcony is provided for every apartment, both large and small. These are treated as an extension of the living spaces overlooking the public squares – a place to connect between the individual dwelling and the wider urban realm.

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153 dwellings in the sector of Sant Cugat del Vallès

Eight units are proposed devoted to housing with a ninth devoted to tertiary uses, with a total buildable area of 15,980 m2. Located between the grid-pattern section of the east of the town and the industrial area, the setting is clearly divided into two zones by the prolongation of Carrer Orient in the form of a pedestrian avenue. The upper part contains the residential buildings and the lower is devoted to facilities and the block of offices and shops. The criteria adopted for the project were, on the one hand, to maintain continuity with the existing urban fabric and the streets of the grid-pattern zone, and on the other, to establish a link between the Rambla (to the north) and the green zone located to the south of Avda. de Cerdanyola, creating a public space. It is also proposed to create a tree-lined frontage along the Riera de Ferrussons, arranged as a perimetral boulevard to bound the side facing the industrial zone. The building corresponding to Units 1-2-3 is arranged in the form of a U open on the eastern side; Unit 4 is located in a similar way opposite the existing block in Carrer Borrell, completing the blocks situated between the streets of Monestir and Diputació. The remaining Units (5,6,7) are arranged so as to continue the blocks aligned along Carrer Borrell, placed perpendicularly with respect to the new Carrer del Torrent de Ferrussons. Unit 8—to be devoted to subsidised housing—is separately positioned at the northern end of the site and forms part of another intervention. The central green avenue passes between these groups of blocks almost horizontally, and is wider in some sections than others.

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Restricted competition for public infrastructures

The competition is for the construction of an ordered public infrastructure adapted to its setting, one of whose main characteristics is the varying extent to which the city blocks have been built up; in other words, the lack of intention to completely fill the block, but rather to create an open city block, or transversal public space that retreats from the shape of the block as laid out by Cerdà. The site provides the opportunity to reformulate the closed-block model and the open block with a diluted central court. The result is a permeable block with an active central court. As for the spatial organisation of the programme, the proposal seeks to balance the volumetry of the block, introducing horizontal and vertical alignments with the other buildings. Most of the square metres are concentrated in a building on the corner with a ground floor plus thirteen further levels, with an adjacent base that absorbs the difference in level of almost one storey between the party wall with Radio Nacional and the chamfered corner, and allows access to the active central court at a level of 3.5 m. The variation in the length of the floor on the lower storeys makes it possible to accommodate productive activities on three levels. The floors above this are shorter and house a variety of training and research modules. A shop unit is included on the access floor, a bar/restaurant on the floor giving onto the square and, with access either from the square or the education section, is the communication office.

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Corporative building

The Agbar tower is a 35-story and 142 m high “small skyscraper”, located in Plaza de las Glorias. It fits exactly in the acute angle formed by Diagonal Ave. and Badajoz St. The shape of the building emulates a fountain having a constant and perfectly stable pressure. This is a very suitable image for the headquarters of a water company, reinforced by the idea that the building does not lean on the ground floor of the plot but it emerges from a crater in whose bed there is a water sheet. Four basement floors fill the whole plot and include support functions and the parking. The auditorium, located in the first basement, appears in the surface as a hill in the undulating topography that makes up the open space planned around the tower. The structure of the building is supported by an interior core and an exterior perimeter, both load-bearing. This arrangement allows floors to be free of structural columns It is constructed by means of two oval concrete cylinders, which support a system of metallic beams. This system, in turn, supports a composite layer of metal and concrete deck. The eccentricity of the core arranges the typical floor plant. The free area gets compressed in the lifts hall and gradually expands to the rest of the floor, generating the work area of the offices. The exterior wall seems to be “pixelated” according to a mesh of almost square modules. The window openings are irregularly arranged on this net, creating a “calligraphy” determined by the isolated accumulation of structural tensions, the flexibility of the offices and the density of perforations in the wall proportional to the sun radiation for every direction. Following this network, the façade shows modules of aluminium corrugated plate lacquered in 25 colours. This coating protects a rockwool fixed to the exterior face of the wall and provides the shaft of the building with a backing, which gradually changes colour. It begins in the base with reddish shades, earthy like the ground they emerge from and ends in the upper floors with blue shades that blend with the sky in a dematerialisation exercise. The exterior cylinder is upright just to the 18th floor where its generators start to curve to the interior, gradually diminishing their section up to the 26th floor where the concrete stops and the siding is completed with a metal structure glass dome. This dome ends the building with its 142 m of height. The last 6 floors, built with concrete post-tensioned noggins of several thicknesses, are cantilevered from the central core, sharing the big space under the dome. These floors will be used for management purposes. All the building is wrapped in a second skin of laminated glass slats with different degrees of transparency, blur the coloured façade behind, and behave as a vibrant veil shrouding the tower. The slats are treated and tilt depending on their location and a thorough study of the sun rays incidence.

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Control tower, Lleida

The Alguaire’s airport control tower is conceived as a unique work that goes beyond the structure itself, integrating the projects of the terminal buildings and annexes. Tower and ground will cover a total area of 3,724 m2.

The tower is planned as a 41 meters high building, consists of two volumes: the tower -which hosts the specific functions and control aircraft- and the ground -which receives the administrative and technical program-. Both are united by the curve that draws the cover of the first floor and that becomes the tower’s facade. This cover is extended until it melts harmoniously with the terminal building and the technicians’ ones.

The visual unit of the building is achieved by coating the entire facade with a sheet of metal shades of green, ochre and yellow that contributes to their integration in the surrounding landscape. The deck will have vegetative cover cumin with stripes of wood and veneer. This plot emulates the vegetable plot-agricultural environment.

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Foredeck building and AC park for the 32th edition of the America´s Cup

The new centre for the America’s Cup - the Veles e Vents building- was finished within a remarkable 11 months of receiving the commission. Design, construction drawings and the construction of the project have all been carried out since their appointment in June 2005. The building and its accompanying park were successfully opened in time for 2006 preliminary regattas. The building and park were the social focal point for the world’s premier offshore racing competition to be staged in Europe for the first time in over 150 years following Swiss Team Alinghi’s win over Team New Zealand in 2003 and the selection of Valencia host city. Following a schedule of regattas, the climax was the Louis Vuitton Cup and the 32nd America’s Cup Match in 2007. The centrepiece of the reorganisation of Valencia’sport, the Edificio Veles e Vents provides a central base for all America’s Cup teams and sponsors as well as being a venue for the public to view the cup races. The Edificio Veles e Vents connects directly to anew park built above car parking, a ’tail’ of elevated public spectator decks stretching out from the building into the port, with bars, restaurants and information points. The decks overlook a newly excavated canal that will link the port to the offshore racing courses. To the north, a new 100,000m2 park links the city to the new seafront. The 10,000m2 four-floor building is composed of a series of stacked and shifting horizontal planes that provide shade and uninterrupted views extending out to sea. The ground floor acts as the reception area for the VIP facilities and has a canal facing restaurant open to the public. The first floor is public and open to the air with retail facilities and a generous viewing deck that connects to the park. The second and third floors house the VIP facilities; the ’Foredeck Club’, a restaurant, a wellness centre and lounges for America’s Cup management, Louis Vuitton and the Consorcio Valencia 2007. The building is a concrete structure with deep cantilevered floor slabs creating the unobstructed and shaded viewing decks that surround all the floors. The building utilises a reduced palette of materials - white painted steel trims the edges of the concrete structure, the ceiling is of white metal panels incorporating linear recessed lighting, the external floors solid timber decking and the internal floors, white resin. The predominant whiteness of the building is offset by simple brightly coloured furniture.

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Restricted competition for a residential complex

Restricted competition called by the Municipal Housing Board for a new residential complex located on a site surrounded by buildings of different heights and with different degrees of relationship with the surrounding urban fabric. The requirements are for a block of 110 supervised apartments and another 35 subsidised apartments. b720’s proposal consists basically of a delicate operation to integrate existing buildings into the intervention. The supervised apartments for the elderly are designed to receive good light and ventilation in living rooms and bedrooms: the solution adopted is for apartments arranged on either side of a central corridor whose dimensions are minimised in order to enable the central courtyard to be larger. The building of subsidised housing, adjacent to the other and closing the gap in Carrer Carretes, abutting the party walls of the existing buildings, consists of two parts: one of four storeys in the interior of the city block and another of seven storeys giving onto the street, thus completing the volume.

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Total refurbishment of an office building for residential use

Transformation of an office building into luxury apartments. The solution adopted retains almost only the structure and the height and meets two challenges of different sorts. Firstly, the avoidance of the habitual solution with a number of internal light-wells, conditioned by the requirement to leave the basement floors unaltered and by a total space between load-bearing walls of some 10 metres. The solution adopted was a central internal courtyard divided into two by a staircase with only one flight per floor and a landing parallel with the facade. Secondly, the design of a new street facade. In part due to its location in the Rambla Catalunya, a vital artery of Barcelona’s Eixample district, the facade is conceived as a large glass screen running from ground level to roof, with a minimalist glazing structure in matte green permitting the use of large sliding panels. This skin is screened externally by metal shutters with adjustable slats. The railings are inside the apartments to minimise the presence of elements on the facade. The composition is abstract and strictly modulated, in a deliberate formal relinquishment in which even the impost lines of the floors disappear. The shutter leaves, which multiply to form the facade, condense its domestic references in an exercise which respects and owes a debt to certain magnificent examples by the masters of modernity in Barcelona.

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Ideas competition for the Multi-Purpose Cultural Centre

The new Multi-Purpose Cultural Centre for Ciutadella is to be placed in one the town’s most problematic areas. The proposal is based on the need to build the physical space of the new square at the same time as completing and suturing the urban fabric in an urban “sewing” operation. The programme includes a new music school and conservatory, an auditorium with seating for 1,000 people and a new radio studio. The basics of the intervention can be summarised as follows: abut the new music school and conservatory to a building consisting of a ground floor plus five upper floors, thus completing the existing urban fabric of Sa Contramurada district; position the new auditorium to continue the alignment created by the opening of Carrer Bisbe Sever and continue Carrer Josepa Rossinyol; and locate the radio building in the space currently occupied by the cinema, abutting it onto the party wall that will be revealed as a consequence of demolishing the latter. Thus the new urban space of Plaça de la Pau is completed and the now-isolated residential block is consolidated by including it in the intervention. The entrance to the new zone is from Avda. Capità Negrete, the town’s central artery. It is also sought to unify the three buildings by means of an element to regularise the resulting empty space, a horizontal band at the height of 5.5 metres that brings together the ground floors and entrances of the various zones with a large pergola. Associated with this exterior space, the ground floors of the buildings become a single transparent, diaphanous space that includes the vestibule of the auditorium, the cafeteria and additional performance space, the vestibule of the school of music and the access to the new studios for OAR.

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Project for the construction of the new Barcelona's Chamber of Commerce

b720 Arquitectos proposal in the competition for the construction of the new Barcelona’s Chamber of Commerce. The characteristics of the Chamber, a contemporary institution with centenarian roots, and Poblenou, a district with a strong industrial past, require a building that articulates tradition and innovation. The uniqueness is conceived as a synthesis of formal restraint and technological innovation, linking these parameters to the symbolic references.

The exemption in height with a contiguous median; the solar incidence and the efficiency energy, the ability to generate a flexible building, and the urban condition, are solved generating a core in the southwest facade that allows a degree of transparency as well as the daylight in the stairs, halls and baths. In addition, it is established a vertical gradient ranging from the use of public spaces to restricted uses.

As external reference, the edges are rounded linking the project to the industrial chimneys, symbol of Poblenou. The provision of the technical core on one side of the plant, together with the use of postensed structures, allows enjoying open plans and a self-adaptive floor.

The facade is lightweight, ventilated, with ceramic coating, and is done by applying a piece of versatile pottery porcelain in order to modulate the impact site.

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The offices designed for the Bassat & Ogilvy Group are in the street Maria de Molina 39 and they are the new corporate headquarters of the company in Madrid. The building consists of two volumes: one tablet of 15 plants and a central bucket of four with a double-height, centrally located at the corner of the land. Conceptually it was projected in two areas: common areas and work ones.

Public areas include access and reception at the ground floor, the dining room in the basement floor and rest areas, directly related to the core with vertical movement. However, the most characteristic is the central courtyard.

This double-height space is located in the centre of the building and was conceived as an all-white cube. Its perimeter is defined by thin strips of aluminium and polycarbonate cellular leaving intuit, through reflections and transparencies, the surrounding spaces. In the lower cladding of the courtyard it were designed rotating panels that allow the incorporation of new spaces for different uses.

The work area was developed into open plan, taking advantage of the flexible glazing perimeter of the building. The choice of glass screens, reflective coatings on steel, false ceilings and furnishings clean lines and low altitude responds to the feeling of space and luminosity wanted.

In both the building and in its facade, the corporate colour was used to emphasize the meaning of the zones and their uses.

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Office interior design

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Short-listed project in the competition for the new Biblioteca General de Navarra

The project proposes the insertion of two separate pieces over a building currently occupied by the San Francisco schools and integrate into it the new use as General Library for the Autonomous Community of Navarre. These pieces are connected with one another through the floors under the slope that occupy the entire site. A carefully-proportioned prism is situated to close the west side of the Plaza de San Francisco without altering its spatial parameters. The new library appears as a beautiful, abstract object, whose content can be divined through a glass wrapper of various degrees of transparency, allowing shelves, books and the considered movements of some of the occupants to be glimpsed within. It is an unfissured sealed container, that does not hide; a geometrical volume that emerges from the ground rather than stands on it and which houses the uses that are characteristic of a library. The rooms of shelving and the reading rooms are arranged in modules of a quarter of a floor each, stepped to form a spiral with a one metre difference in level between them. They are linked by ramps, thus ensuring the required degrees of independence and flexibility. The second piece (which houses the access and the administrative areas) is a slender tablet abutting party walls on Nueva and San Francisco streets, culminating the block and forming the library’s most expressive facade. Screen-printed letters and orthographical signs attenuate the transparency the glass facade. Between the two volumes there is a small square that belongs simultaneously to the library and to the network of open urban spaces.

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Construction of a Health Centre, Mental Health Centre and Residential Services

The project is based on the shape of a comb with irregular teeth. The proposal is for a building fragmented in three volumes of differing heights which, although they have a unitary appearance, provide a more considered response to the urban needs of this part of the city by generating a good relationship between the new public space that has been created and the proposed building while, at the same time, ensuring good luminosity and views towards the interior of the site.  The planned building is adapted to the terrain and is open to natural light and to the landscape. To this end the walls slope to respect the existing vegetation is such a way that most of the trees can be preserved, along with, to a large degree, the previous appearance of the site.

The building’s emplacement along a south-east to north-east axis with three “teeth”, one towards the south, one towards the south-east and another approximately towards the west, enables various objectives to be met. These include: locating the rooms and consultation rooms around the gardens in order to obtain warm and controlled ambiences; and concentrating most of the building along the north-east side so as to generate the building’s own public space. The landscaping of the areas free of construction varies according to the services offered in the adjacent hospital facilities. The aim is to increase users’ comfort by introducing natural elements into the building and by suppressing the noise from traffic which is both near and intense. In order to adapt the building to those in the surrounding area, the maximum advantage has been taken of the area of the site and the building’s height has been reduced, adapting the 4,539 square metres of built area to the 1,796.54 square-metre site.

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Single residence in Oropesa del mar

The plan consisted of two vacation houses for two brothers, both housings having the same needs and located in a trapezoidal plot with an area of 800 m2 and a maximum drop in the East-West direction of 4.60 m. It has been built a single body with its own personality, not the mere sum of two housings, in order to avoid the semi-detached housing model. The proposal consists of a prism arranged in parallel to the boundary with the adjacent plot, observing the perceptive 3 m of distance from the house and from the road, with the purpose of releasing the maximum uninterrupted area of the garden, thus enhancing the privacy and facing the house to the North. The functional program is divided in two: the private part of every family unit and the part to be shared or alternated. This way, in ground and first floors, two equal bodies are symmetrically arranged, each one containing a living room with an open kitchen (Ground Floor) and two bedrooms both with bathrooms (First Floor). The two housings connect through the kitchens. There is a wide common courtyard amongst both bodies. This central courtyard stays protected from the sunrays by a wooden slats revolving lattice, which make it become a nice shady place. The common areas are in a lower ground floor, which, by way of concrete base includes two bedrooms with en suite bathrooms, maintenance rooms and stockroom.

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Office building in Avenida Diagonal 197

The site forms part of the Campus Audiovisual, which occupies the lands bounded by Avinguda Diagonal and the streets of Llacuna, Almogàvers and Ciutat de Granada. In consonance with the criterion defined by the PERI (Special Plan for Interior Reform) of the Campus Audiovisual sector and with subsequent adjustment of volumes occupied (with the approval of the Barcelona City Council’s Quality Commission) by the team of architects David Chipperfield Architects, b720 Arquitectos and BB GG Arquitectes, the building seeks integration into the new composition of the Campus Audiovisual sector in a coherent and harmonious way. The proposal for the sector is that it should be a permeable comb linking Avinguda Diagonal with the interior of the Campus Audiovisual, creating spaces to which the public has access that bring the various volumes together. Although it is a permeable proposal with a discontinuous facade giving onto Diagonal, the fact that the facades of all the buildings are aligned with the avenue produces an effect of integration with the whole of the axis that springs from Plaça de les Glòries, creating a sequence of volumes initiated by the Agbar Tower. The volumetric, spatial and urbanistic relationship between the building and the future neighbouring buildings creates a special relationship where the latter converge with the nearest side of Carrer Ciutat de Granada, mimicking the chamfered street-corners of the Eixample district of the city. The building consists of two differentiated parts: the lower floors, which form an irregular rhomboid, align with Diagonal and form the base of the building; while the upper floors, trapezoidal in shape, break with the alignment of Diagonal, withdrawing towards the interior of the block to create a slenderer volume to crown the building.

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Ceramic lattice research for Construmat 2007

Celosía Roca for Casa Barcelona 2007 is a versatile system of perforated ceramic pieces with finishes on both sides capable of dividing spaces and complementing the contributions made by wall covering systems and facades. With various kinds of perforation they filter the light, air and vision in a regular and continuous manner and can be combined in many different ways that can be adapted to every kind of architectural design as well as permitting the installation of equipment and other elements in its cavities. A system of internal channels makes a new support system possible by threading cables out of sight and creating a flexible ceramic fabric with no other visible sub-structure. Their format, finish and mounting systems are compatible with all ceramic covering systems. They can be used for both flooring and wall covering and also as lattices, shuttering, screening, latticework roofing, drainage, diffuser or garden paving. The same material can be used throughout for a range of different solutions. Contemporary ceramics for generating architecture, not just covering surfaces.

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Research into new facades for buildings at Construmat 2003

Location: CONSTRUMAT 2003 Although living accommodation has traditionally been built with solid walls that are difficult to modify, nowadays more adaptability is required. The “variable wall” employs prestressed concrete panels to create a skin whose thickness, dimensions, lightness and texture can be adapted to requirements. The proposal, developed as part of Casa Barcelona/Construmat 2003, offers a wall which, without losing its nature as such, incorporates the adaptability of the orifice: it can be fixed or moveable, opaque or transparent, long-lasting and removable, permeable or watertight, open or closed and may serve on the facade or in the interior. It is a modular skin system based on interchangeable concrete panels with a variety of degrees of perforation (ranging from a light lattice to complete opacity), which furthermore incorporate systems to make it possible to move them or open them. The prototype suggests the multiplicity of ways in which the layers of skin can be organised and arranged, but as presented it consists of a series of modular concrete panels with mechanical properties enabling them, though of minimum thickness, to meet stringent requirements and even to span the conventional height between floors. Their behaviour in flexion is excellent, they are recyclable, machinable and impermeable and can be textured.

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Enlargement of the Professional College of Quantity Surveyors and Technical Architects, Alicante

The proposal is closely adapted to the shapes of the existing urban fabric: the heights and setbacks from the street become integral to it. The functional programme is organised on the basis of an ascending spatial axis that copies the longitudinal orientation of the site. This axis, which takes the form of a large empty space that receives the open spaces of all the floors, culminates in a terrace on a fourth level. The central space emphasises, by means of a play on continuous planes, the flood of light that descends from the glazed roof. There are two entrances: the one in the main facade giving onto Calle Altamira leads directly to the lobby at the same level (flanked on the right by the cafeteria and on the left by an exhibition room). Opposite is the entrance from Calle Mayor. The main activity is administration, and hence most of the space is devoted to offices. There are direct vertical connections from the lobby to two important parts of the programme: to the level below, with a fully-equipped meeting room; and to the first floor (the registry), which receives many visitors.

The roof line respects continuity with the volumes at either side, treated in a singular way with ceramics that create a permeable shell that filters the daylight which enters and covers part of the terrace on the fourth floor. These ceramics mimic the adjacent buildings with respect both to the shape of the shell and the shades and qualities of the light proper to its composition.

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College of Architect´s Headquarter of Galicia

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Competition for the new municipal exhibition and conference centre

The project is organised around an empty space—the cloister—to be understood as an element that seeks to link the complex with the historic centre of the city of Ávila. Special emphasis has also been placed on the appearance of the complex from above, in view of the fact that it can be seen from the ancient city walls, as well as on its appearance from the nearby gateway in the city wall and from the bank of the river. It is for this reason that it has been conceived as a building without an exterior facade, or rather, a “roof-building”. This gently-sloping central courtyard could be an ideal venue for open-air performances with the natural backdrop of the ancient defensive walls. It is intended to articulate the exterior zones bounded by the cloister and the main access lobby both functionally and spatially. The exteriors combine certain percentages of hard paving and vegetable mantle. Paving blends into lawn according to use, gradient or amount of insolation. The building consists of a main hall with space for 1,600 people. Its volume is variable, making different configurations and capacities available. Ample space is provided for technical equipment, with the aim of offering the greatest possible flexibility, not in terms merely of function, but also of acoustic versatility, in view of the growing complexity of performances. Another hall, with a capacity of 525, can have independent access (via the ramp beside the San Segundo hermitage), and a mezzanine with booths for simultaneous translators and broadcasting equipment. Both halls communicate directly with the dressing rooms and general services, which are in a zone away from public activity, with access from the car park behind the building. The rehearsal rooms are on the western side with views of the landscape, and that facade is equipped with a system of adjustable panels to avoid the entry of excessive sunlight in the afternoons. The exhibition rooms are conceived as a natural extension of the vestibule. This space can be linked with the conference zone in such a way that they can act together as a unit with its own independent services and access. The room is lit by north-facing skylights and is protected from the southern sun by a recessed facade that does not, however, impede the view of the city.

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Detached house in Girona

An isolated detached house in Girona, on a site with a marked slope and of irregular shape, that is adapted to the terrain so as to take the best advantage of the views and a good orientation. Subject to strict regulations that require the use of stone on facades and an inclined tile roof, the programme consists of a single storey that is stepped on three levels to adapt to the natural slope of the site. The reduced dimensions of the programme enabled the house to be conceived as a compact box with stone walls and with openings of different dimensions that offer views of the landscape, and with a single inclined roof that acts like a fifth facade. There are wells within the volume to bring light and air to the inner parts of the building. The house is arranged in parallel bands adapted to the topography: in the upper band—oriented to the north-west—is the garage and the night rooms; in the lower—oriented to the south-east—are the day rooms, more related to the garden outside. The third, semi-basement, level contains rooms for guests. The southern facade gives onto a terrace covered with a pergola, conceived as an interior space open to the garden.

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69 dwellings and shop units in U.A.6 of the PERI Diagonal / Poble Nou

The project forms part of a general intervention provided for by the Detailed Study of the Definition of Volumes of Intervention Unit 6 of the PERI (Special Plan for Interior Reform) of Diagonal-Poblenou. This study covers the transformation of an old industrial site in Avinguda Diagonal, Barcelona, into two independent buildings of 42 and 27 apartments with facades giving onto Carrer Pere IV and Avinguda Diagonal respectively, with apartments of 2, 3 and 4 bedrooms, some of them duplex. For the facades it is proposed to use high-density bi-prestressed cement panels, as a continuation and application of the research carried out on this type of closure in the Casa Barcelona project, presented in collaboration with the firm Pabitex. The panels are used both as a skin in their solid version and for solar protection in a perforated version on interior facades and the balconies of the facades that give onto the street. Hence, systems were developed to enable the panels to be handled and moved. They are tinted in various colours according to their opacity and their location in the skin of the building. The same compositional criteria were applied to both facades and all the main rooms have a 1.80-metre deep balcony.

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Winner proposar for the new location of the Fira de Bellcaire

European Competition for the construction of the new Encants Market in Barcelona. Convened by the City Council through the municipal company BIMS, the ruling was made public last April 22, 2008. The new Encants market is installed as a device to mediate between the reform of the Plaza de las Glorias and the axis of Meridiana, an area popularly known as les Glories de Bosquet.

The proposal raises a platform (or commercial square) at various levels as a continuous surface suitable for all commercial activities. By bending the platform, the different levels of the street are reconciled, understanding the market as a large square deck, capable of instilling activity in all parts of the program.

The casing, the principal component of urban recognition, protects commercial activities at the same time that becomes a mechanism reflection of the city into the market. Each modular structure will have different inclinations to reflect light, atmosphere and landscape.

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Two apartment towers in Plaça Europa, Barcelona

The aim of the project is the construction of two 15-storey apartment buildings located in Plaça Europa in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona), with 76 dwellings per tower, plus ground floor shop units and a car park. Although the proposal is for buildings with a square base, the rigidity of this shape is softened by the slight perimetral curvature. The interplay of convex and concave radii emphasises the corners and responds to the distribution requirements. The buildings have a double skin to create a strip of terrace which provides a margin that allows for all the openings each apartment requires without these being visible from the exterior, thus achieving a more homogenous external image, more closely resembling an office building than an apartment building. Furthermore, this second skin also responds to the orientations of the building: the interior skin adheres to the second skin on the north-east and north-west facades, creating more useful space inside the apartments, while on the south-east and south-west facades, this margin becomes a terrace, which is widest on the southern corner. The geometry of the building allows for greater width on the corners, giving the apartments greater spatial quality in the day rooms. The exterior skin consists of a combination of strips of perforated polished stainless-steel sheet of different sizes, arranged horizontally. The buildings thus create an interplay of reflections of themselves and of the surroundings.

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Hotel and offices in the de Llobregat trade-fair zone

The project is being done in collaboration with the Japanese architect Toyo Ito. Located between Barcelona airport and the city, the Torres Fira project is the gateway to the new Hospitalet de Llobregat trade fair zone. One of the great priorities was to respond to its setting and take advantage of the site’s strategic position between to major projects—Plaça Europa and Fira 2000—acting as a gateway and bridge between them. The office building, orthogonal in shape, located perpendicularly to the Plaça Europa axis and laid out at 30º with respect to Gran Via, becomes a termination for the square and dialogues with the other side of Gran Vía, where there are two orthogonal towers perpendicular to this axis. The hotel uses a similar language: the building. Its subtle trefoil ground-plan is gradually rotated with increasing height and opens up like a flower at the top. The tower turns on its own axis, greeting as it does so the city, the airport, the Plaça Europa and the trade fair site, the viewer’s perception of it constantly changing as it does so. This perception is complemented by a second tower, which at first sight is a simple volume, but which contains a nucleus that also rotates on its axis, reflecting the other tower.

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Headquarters for the Government Delegation in Seville

The proposal is for a single volume that incorporates a tower and a base, differentiated in terms of the uses they accommodate. The base houses most of the areas for receiving the public, the school (arranged in such a way that it is totally independent), the auditorium and the exhibition and waiting areas, with a flexible structure adapted to the natural needs of these areas. Thus, the intervention proposes structures with wide spans and slender partitions. Furthermore, the arrangement of the volume permits accessibility from three points: the main entrance from the park; one specifically for access to the auditorium and for special events; and the third to the school. The tower accommodates administrative and management functions, in a structure that is very strict but at the same time flexible, with a regularity that will facilitate future restructurings.

The skin of the building is in itself a singular feature and allows for infinite graduations of transparency and light penetration. It completely covers the building, giving it an extremely unitary look, in which the multiple interior rooms can scarcely be perceived, breaking up the sense of scale usually produced by a succession of floors one on top of the other. Its colourful ceramic materials, very much in tune with Sevillian tradition, lends the building an immanent character that leaves artifice aside to assert, with its calculated modularity, the tectonics of our era.

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Winning proposal in the competition for the fourth casino licence in Catalonia

The Gran Casino Costa Brava will be located in the grounds of the Gran Hotel Monterrey in the centre of Lloret and is the object of an ambitious architectural and environmental project. Both practical and singular, it shuns more traditional solutions and conceives the building as a complex that emerges from the ground, while distinguishing three well-differentiated levels integrated into their environment. The first level is the entrance way to the Gran Casino Costa Brava, with a large canopy 55 metres long by 11 wide which is equipped with an LED screen that will function as a multimedia illumination system, able to display moving images. The canopy penetrates into the interior of the hall and also functions as a multimedia ceiling for it. The floor, in highly-reflective dark wood, captures and reflects the animated colours of the screen. This inventive light project, conceived and implemented by b720 and UVA (United Visual Artists) with consultancy by Maurici Ginés, makes it a potential medium for audiovisual art. The casino can also be accessed from the private ramp leading from the hotel, from a second level, where a semi-covered space is proposed integrated into the lobby of the Conference Centre. This raised lobby is protected from the exterior but is permeable and communicates with the cultural life of the building. With a capacity of 1,000 people, the conference centre is outstanding for its multifunctionality and its acoustic properties. The building culminates on a third level in a garden that forms the roof of the construction, providing a total of 6,000 m2" of green zone visually related to the already-existing gardens which belong to the Hotel Guitart Monterrey. This roof garden softens the visual impact of the complex and enables water to be collected for the new garden. Furthermore, it protects the hotel from possible noise pollution from the road. There is parking space for approximately 420 cars below grade.

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30 dwellings and commercial premises

The owner’s requirements called for approximately thirty conventional two-, three-, or four-bedroom apartments with an estimated average surface area of 110 m2. The ground floor contains the commercial premises, with the special requirement that the whole of the first basement floor is to be used entirely by the occupants of the largest shop unit. The initial reaction to this clear set of requirements would be a layout with five apartments per floor and three storeys below grade. However, the topological impossibility of arranging five housing units per floor in such a way that they would all have access to the exterior of the block made it advisable to adopt a layout with two independent vertical communication nuclei and entrance doors. There are two light-wells or courtyards: a larger one (with a deliberately asymmetrical organic arrangement and open to the central open space within the city block as a mixed courtyard) and another, elliptical, one on the axis formed by the bisector of the corner. The organisation of the apartments accords with conventional requirements; there are five apartments per floor, of which four—the larger ones—extend from front to rear of the building while the fifth is open to the facade on the chamfered corner. The composition of the facades was approached with the desire to contribute a building that would be serene but with a marked presence on this stretch of Gran Via, the street which Cerdà intended as Barcelona’s principal thoroughfare.

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Corporate building in sector 22@

An office building on a trapezoidal site which forms part of the actions for sector 22@ in Barcelona. The total built surface area is 10,375 m2 and it consists of a ground floor plus 12 more floors. The floors located above grade are devoted to offices, and those below grade to parking for 40 vehicles and service rooms for private use. The proposal is for a tower rising above a more solid and compact three-storey plinth, aligned with Carrer Tànger. The tower section, with a rhomboid floor plan, follows the line of the chamfered corner, without slavishly reproducing it, to reinforce the slender complexity of the resulting volume. Its ten storeys are separated from the plinth by a service floor, recessed with respect to the plane of the facade, so that it seems to float above the base, lending it lightness. This being a corporate building, diaphanous floors are proposed, although the possibility has been considered that in the future they could be divided up into several units. The skin of the facade is made up of panels of stainless steel metal fabric that act as perimetral solar protection (with a shade coefficient of 50%) for the interior of the building as well as contributing to the overall lightness of appearance. A quarter of these panels have a 90 cm diameter spherical impression created by drawing. These are located in two positions on the height of the panel, and alternately face inwards and outwards.

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New spaces for offices and auditoria

The project for the interior of the Agbar Tower includes the management offices on the topmost seven floors and the basement areas that accommodate the auditorium. The former are located beneath the immense glass dome, 30 m high, of floors 26 to 31 and begin on the floor below, where the management cafeteria is situated and which acts as a transition between the concrete cylinder and the base of the dome. Cantilevered out from the vertical circulation core, the senior management offices are arranged as closed wooden “boxes” of fine hardwoods with some gloss-painted in bright colours strewn around a pristine white space. The “boxes” do not reach up to the ceiling, and so the open spaces of all the floors are linked at all levels of the dome. The intervention on the auditorium was to create a meeting hall with a degree of flexibility to host other events. Its vestibule seeks to be a continuation of the ground floor entrance at the same time as being visually connected with the exterior through windows facing the lake and fountains that surround the building. The stone cladding of the auditorium lobby links it conceptually to the hole in the earth out of which the building “grows” in the exterior lake. It is a flexible space, with moveable panels that can be partially closed for events and lectures or fully opened on other occasions.

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Remodeling of the "Escalinata", the "Paseo del Óvalo" and surroundings  

  The Paseo del Ovalo is an historic promenade built on the site of the city walls. The promenade is one of the many sensitive monuments in this world heritage city. The project consists of reforming the Paseo del Ovalo and providing a new access to it from the railway station. The immediate environment leading to the promenade has been improved with the addition of planting, street furniture and upgrading the quality of finishes and providing additional lighting. Passengers choosing not to climb the ornate neo-Mudéjar style stairway leading to the Paseo proceed along a defined pathway through a hard landscape, to a tall new cavity inserted into the city wall. This constricts to a tighter opening within the depth of the walls and leads to the elevator lobby, which is top-lit via the glazed elevator shaft which pierces through to the upper level.

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Refurbishment of the facades of a building for the Harry Walker offices, by Francesc Mitjans

Refurbishment of the facade of the Harry Walker building, a work by Francesc Mitjans, one of the Barcelonese architects who pioneered the Modern movement in Catalonia. The work of Mitjans—an architect with a long career—is a fundamental referent for the study of Catalan architecture in the second half of the 20th century. Originally, the transparent and the opaque elements of the facade received the same treatment. This very interest in the facade as a continuous element led him to choose very slender stainless-steel section for the window frames, etc. The whole of the main facade is conceived as a large panel between the vacancies created by the ground floor and mezzanine floors, which are recessed from the plane of the facade, and the similarly recessed top storey. The general criterion for the intervention was to recover the building’s original image by the use of materials and constructional systems that would meet modern requirements for comfort without losing the essence of the original project. The solution chosen was the one closest to the original that could be found on the market, consisting of welded steel glazing bars, galvanised and lacquered with a finish similar to stainless steel which, thanks to their reduced thickness, enabled these requirements to be met while maintaining the original appearance of a terse, continuous panel. To restore the original image of overlapping pieces of slate, a new outer skin is applied on top of the existing one, consisting of overlapping thermally hardened resin panels, creating a surface texture that evokes the former stone finish. The colour is a dark grey similar to the original slate. A similarly modern solution is adopted for the granite panels, substituting them with light aluminium alloy panels. These panels are finished in mid-grey lacquer to evoke the colour of the original stone.

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Competition for Bremen´s art museum extension

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Hotel and Convention Centre in Terrassa

The project is for the construction of a 198-room hotel with complementary services and a complex to accommodate meetings and conventions with a total surface area of some 15.000 m2. To better integrate it into the natural setting, the programme is divided into four buildings: three prismatic volumes arranged around a fourth, partially below ground level, which forms the nucleus of the complex. Thus, from the exterior the viewer sees as fragmented and discontinuous a building which in reality possesses a substantial volume. The volumes that contain the bedrooms have a basement floor to house services and the hotel’s complementary activities and three storeys above grade, with the rooms arranged longitudinally down the central corridor. The conventions building has three higher storeys and it contains the auditorium, multi-purpose rooms of various sizes and numerous meeting-rooms. It was decided to open up the southern facade, providing the communal and social areas with views and a good orientation. The bedrooms facing in this direction have a small balcony and a solar protection system that has been turned into a characteristic of the entire intervention: conceived as a large curtain dyed in several shades of green, it seeks to “camouflage” the buildings, mimicking vegetation.

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Competition for the new Jalisco state library

The location of the new library within the university campus requires an image that can be observed obliquely from a passing car, without relinquishing its status as a frontal building, the centre of a classical axial orientation. The programme is organised around a gentle ramp that allows for the growth of each of the collections, inserting “cushion” spaces, maintaining their spatial continuity and avoiding changes of level. In this way, a stringent programmatic condition becomes the new building’s principal virtue, allowing for spaces for growth and relating them with each of the levels in a fluid succession of spaces. The gently inclined plane is the axis round which the rest of the building is articulated. In the centre is a dorsal spine that acts as a well to capture natural light. Two large openings filter the light to the centre of the building and to the most interior parts of the work-rooms. To the initial parallelopideal volume of the building is attached a metal skin that provides solar and acoustic protection and is made up of a metallic mesh of various densities in accordance with the activities that are to take place in the different zones. Thus, for the book stacks, which do not require views but do require a high degree of protection from the sun, the mesh is very dense, whereas for the reading rooms the density is less, and in the rest and social areas it is practically non-existent.

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Construction of a shopping center and a hotel in Los Arqueros

Los Arqueros Shopping Centre is located in Los Arqueros urbanization, in the town of Benahavís (Málaga). It is inserted into a residential area of semidetached houses, which have two heights, and is surrounded by public roads, resulting in a complex of exempted buildings with five facades.

The project gives special importance to the integration with the environment and the generation of an urban space. It means building a floral fence, giving the identity and uniqueness required for commercial use, while its integration is achieved.

The complex is divided into two two-storey buildings located in parallel which restrict the plot and form a public square that revolves around the commercial space, generating an area to access to both spaces. This square has a careful treatment looking for quality space and equipment, and, at the same time, being sought to cover it with light structures to generate spaces in shadow.

The facades of the building (transparent, open and with small cracks) open to the adjacent urbanizations. The floral fence in there grows and joins the entire building generating landscaped decks.

The two buildings that make up the complex are structured in a ground floor with shops and services, and an upper floor with offices and catering areas. The hotel fits with them.

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Winning project for the construction of subsidised housing in Asturias

The project is for open blocks of apartments, irregular in shape, and adapted to the street line on the north and west. Functionally, the apartments are organised in two blocks of similar height (6 storeys) which are related to one another at the corner with a separation of six metres. This morphological difference is in turn reflected in the treatment of the two groups and in the finish of their facades. The resulting volume giving onto Calle Ocho is slightly curved, copying the official alignment of the plot. The building parallel with the Avenida de Asturias has four doorways giving access to two apartments per floor, except on the corners of the internal perimeter, where there is one duplex dwelling.

With respect to the facade, the criteria adopted are to align, insert and rotate within the pre-established bounds, but above all to treat the directions as perceived from around the plot. On some stretches of the facade the skin acts as an adaptive and differentiating element with three types of cladding. Different degrees of opacity provide for solar and acoustic protection; the various degrees of adjustability of the panels allow users to modify their relations with the surroundings according to the time of day.

The green zone improves the buildings’ microclimatic conditions, while the articulations become, furthermore, circulation routes on the ground floor that allow occasional transit between the public and the private space.

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Reformation of an office building

The project consists of transforming an administrative building between party walls, which had significant structural problems, into an office building. The work presents two basic concepts: on one side, the training of obtaining, from a very determining pre-existence, the flexibility and services level that this typology demands. On the other side, a new façade had to allow its identification as a contemporary corporative building. We decided to use colour as an integration tool in a consolidated environment of upper class apartment buildings On the façade of Mestre Nicolau, coloured transparent glass slats draw a surface floating without specific limits face to the siding. The whole sets out gradually in two aspects: horizontally, the colour, changing from yellow to orange, borrowing the shades of the awnings of the close bourgeois balconies and terraces, and, vertically, the density of the slats, which, depending on the sun rays and on the narrowness of the street, make the protection more necessary in the upper floors than in the lower floors. In the inner façade, we take advantage of the existing siding wall. We designed a simple white facing with oblong holes, regularly arranged. Every hole is encircled with a thick sheet plate as a perimeter entrance portal projecting from the façade surface and painted in several colours with a progression similar to the one of the main façade. By removing a projecting body of the interior façade, it was possible to place the new access core in the central space, which was an air shaft by the party wall on the right. This allowed the distribution of the floors in two main office areas, facing, respectively, the exterior -Mestre Nicolau St.- and the inside -air shaft- and also a central area thought as an open office. The ground floor is at the street level and comprises the accesses to the offices, the ramp for the parking access and a commercial premise taking the rest of available space. The structure was reinforced with carbon fibre and endured certain changes in the position of the columns existing in the basement and ground floors to be able to fit the current distribution to the new conditions of use We used colour combined with very highlighted graphics as a very effective resource to supply unity and style. The hall and stairs are covered with black terrazzo applied continually on flooring and vertical facings, which sometimes tilt and form light grooves or transform in the concierge desk.

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Enlargement of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

The competition held in 1999 was for the extension of the MNCARS by means of complementary buildings on the site adjacent to the building by Sabatini. This process culminated in the selection of the project by Ateliers Jean Nouvel, which was subsequently developed and implemented by b720 Arquitectos and Alberto Medem in the executive project and works management phases. The project involves the creation of “a public square” (that emerges from the arrangement of the new buildings: temporary exhibitions, auditorium and library) and the south-east facade of the existing museum. On the other hand, the strategy adopted for the project is to differentiate and segregate the functions and spaces while perceptually unifying them by means of a large roof that would embrace the buildings grouped round the “public square”. The space is materialised as a set of interstices that invite the citizen to go beyond the bounds of the public thoroughfare and thus establish complementary functions, a dialogue—the fruit of contrast—between the two constructions. From the massive opacity of Sabatini’s building (the rotundity of its simple orthogonal volume) to the lightness and dematerialisation of the new buildings, where glass plays a leading role in this devirtualisation, along with the recessing of the facades on the upper levels that blurs the contours. All this is offset by the cantilevered roof which restores, at least at the topmost level, what is lost at ground level: the definition of the bounds of the museum in its relation with the city.

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Office chair designed for Mooa, by Alis

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Offices, shops and parking building

The project for this offices building is generated for compliance with program requirements, as well as its power as part of design, functionality and services in a context to urbanize Sevilla. The project consists of a ground floor and a first floor, and twelve floors of offices for sale.

On the ground floor are located the pedestrian and vehicular access to the four levels of parking and shops of different sizes. On the first floor are located the meeting and conference rooms, a coffee shop, an exhibition space and a warehouse.

It depletes the gauge so that there is a need to redistribute 400m2, which will be used to generate a series of open spaces concatenated, starting from a large courtyard with a triple height access to reach a balcony on the top floor. Open spaces are scheduled as terraces generating shadow on the sides of the building that have a less favourable sunlight (south and west).

The structure is divided into a mixed system. The upper part of the core supports a network of beams on the deck, from which hang a number of plants working on traction. The other area consists of the areas that are supported by columns reaching basement working on compression.

Finally, it is placed an ornamental treatment, based on the Arabic and Flemish tradition, applicable to many aspects of the design of the building - carpets, flooring, pattern of grooves in prefabricated panels for the facade, etc - trying to give the building a unique and distinct overall image.

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Competition for the construction of two towers in Madrid

Two almost identical towers are proposed, with laterally-placed communications cores, and two four-storey blocks. This configuration exhausts the permitted buildable area and provides responses to the functional and environmental conditions imposed by the urban setting. The principle of rationality is the guiding light of the proposal.

Thus, a main entrance axis is established, centralising access control, strengthening the idea of a unified complex and creating clear, direct routes. The lower blocks are arranged to the south, delimiting an urban space in which the entrances are placed. The visual relations between the work areas and the garden surroundings condition the option of unifying the garages, adjusting the buildings so as to obtain the largest possible area of forested garden.

The floor-plan with the communications core to one side is an effective response to the orientations; the core shows a solid face to the east, offering protection from the early-morning sun, which in the winter is as much of a nuisance as the sun in the west. On the western side is a structural panel which, as well as reducing the glazed area for protection against the western sun, has a double skin to control direct solar radiation and noise pollution. On the north and south sides, which are less exposed to the low sun, windows running the length of the facades are proposed.

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International competition, winning project

"The garden of Poble Nou is made up like architecture of stones with its vaults, its roofs, its hypostyle chambers, its domes, its walls, its terraces. But the material is alive, green or coloured, natural and controlled. It is an architecture that requires calm, silence.” (Jean Nouvel). A competition in collaboration with Jean Nouvel Ateliers with the subsequent development of the executive project and works management phases by b720 Arquitectos. The project is a garden situated on four irregular city blocks where Avinguda Diagonal intersects with Ildefons Cerdà’s grid pattern in the Poble Nou district of Barcelona. Each of the blocks is surrounded by a wall of vegetation in which the masses of dense, tall bougainvilleas mask the enclosure and project the garden towards Diagonal. These walls protect a plantation of weeping willows and tipuanas regularly distributed on a grid of 9, 7 or 4 metres that occupies two thirds of the area of the garden. Their branches link together, creating vegetable vaults and domes. There are several ambiences with different situations and episodes: a large circular space for festive occasions, coloured trees planted according to a particular inclination to create "branches", walls with tapestries of flowers in watery chambers, chambers with tables and seats... able to offer a response to the habits and customs of visitors of all ages: dancing sardanas, playing petanca, taking a stroll, etc.

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Winning project in the international competition for urban reorganisation

The Plaza del Torico in Teruel is at the same time a distributor of urban flows and a place where the citizens meet one another, gather and socialise. The reorganisation of the urban fabric also called for a parallel solution that would mean a step towards the future while respecting the complexities and spatial and heritage qualities to be found in any historic city.

The project is based on a system of paving using large cobbles with a pattern of embedded luminescent lines to create a delicate atmosphere while avoiding an excessively dominant illumination. The light, understood as a fluid element, spreads throughout the square but with variations: around the Torico fountain (encircled by luminous lines), the Fondero and Somero cisterns, and the Arca Secreta (where the density of the lines is reduced by half, to stress the archaeological value of these points).

The square is organised longitudinally by lines that accentuate the perspective, constructed with linear lighting systems in the porticos and facades, two conduits for installations on the exterior of the porticos, to eliminate the cables that until now have been attached to the facades.

The lighting project is completed by the installation of lights concealed within the Torico fountain (which can change colour on special occasions). Thus, the existing lighting, essentially vertical, gives way to a more horizontal arrangement.

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Retructuring of the Valencia del Mar - Marina Real Juan Carlos, Valencia

In view of the urban density of Valencia, and as a referent for a future urban model that will be more sustainable, a large park is proposed to terminate the biological corridor of the Turia Garden, strengthening its role as an urban axis and the principal connection between the city and the sea. At the end of this great, metropolitan-scale park, the green zone and the public space are the elements that articulate the whole area that is the object of the competition, encompassing and connecting the different proposed uses. Thus, green zone and public space are the main identifying elements around the Inner Basin, with an urban fabric that combines the traditional compact, multifunctional city with the new model of green city.

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Project for the construction of dwellings with services

The project is for the construction of 94 dwellings, of two different types: 72 apartments with shared services and 22 conventional ones. The intervention is conceived as a unitary one despite the requirement to meet the needs of different types of users with different types of residence. The result is two longitudinal parallel blocks separated by a central band of courtyards above which are situated the access cores for the apartments. The resulting volume, adapted to the steeply-sloping site, seeks to interact with the existing urban fabric, with a recessing of the upper floors to match the formal arrangement of the adjacent building (by J. Soteras) and establish, on the base of the glazed plinth that is the ground floor, a vegetable facade that weaves together the cantilevered continuous terraces of the apartments. The apartments with services are on the ground floor: reading rooms, games rooms, day rooms and restaurant open from the access facade, while the gymnasium, projection room and guest rooms, as well as the service rooms, are in a semi-basement giving onto the rear street. In the central area of the ground floor, circulation between the various spaces is articulated around the light from the light well as well as the skylights. The majority of the apartments give onto continuous terraces which, screened by the vegetable facade, delimit a space conceived with the warmth of the screen of vegetation and of the woodwork and wooden flooring. On the roof, above the longitudinal volume of the south-east facade, is the swimming pool and a large terrace and garden.

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Refurbishment of the sea front and system of public spaces

The old sea front of Sitges has undergone successive modifications over the years. Little now remains of the shoreline that was born of Sitges’ historic naval, rural, fishing and wine-growing traditions, of the place where fishers mended their nets and where boats were moored at the base of the bastion, or of the atmosphere below the church of Sant Bartomeu and Santa Tecla. The main aim of the project is to restore the geometry of the old promenade, giving it back the atmosphere it once had. Contrary to the effect of previous interventions that have turned the present promenade into a barrier in the way of the beach, this one suppresses all architectural barriers with the widening of the promenade. On one hand, the consolidation of the historic shape (more urban and linked with the line of buildings on the landward side) and, on the other, the creation of a new space at beach level, with a more relaxed character, generating a more gradual ambience of transition between the town and the sea. Space for vehicular traffic will also be restricted to give pedestrians more space. As for the vegetation, on the premise of restoring historical assets, it is proposed to plant the original species in various stretches of the promenade. In newly-created stretches native species will be planted that are typical of the Mediterranean landscape.

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Restricted competition; students’ residence and offices for Fundació UB media

Restricted competition called by the University of Barcelona and the City Council for a site destined for the new building for the Sant Jordi Senior College and the offices of the Fundació UB Mèdia, located on the land formerly occupied by the RCD Espanyol football stadium, and subject to norms laid down in the urbanisation plan drawn up by E. Bonell, F. Rius and J. M. Gil. In the end, the proposal by J. Ll. Mateo was chosen. The building is located on a site which is affected by a number of preconditioning factors, which can be summarised as follows: the new facility stands in a residential area together with structures that comply with a previous urban plan which determines important relations between them and the exterior space. This implies the pre-existence of certain alignments and heights which the new proposal must necessarily take into account; the existence of an office building located at the south-west end of the site with an exposed party wall of four storeys; the alignment of a future new street and the position of the site between public spaces; the difference of level equivalent to one storey between north-west and south-east fronts; the requirement for high occupation, making it necessary to locate part of the programme under grade. The new building is really the sum of two independent buildings. We take advantage of this fact to resolve the insertion of the building in such a complex situation. Nonetheless, a common vocabulary and compositional and material coherence is maintained. Two buildings that function autonomously although their exterior is conceived as unitary. Thus, the building for the offices of Fundació UB Mèdia is conceived as a tall volume located at the north-east end of the site and able to achieve continuity with the neighbouring buildings. Its height is the same as that of the adjacent office building and it also strictly maintains alignments with the three residential buildings along Carrer Can Ràbia and Carrer Dr. Roux. It is a little tower consisting of ground floor plus seven upper floors. The offices are arranged around a central core which contains accesses and services. The SeniorCollege building is conceived as a volume that abuts the party wall maintaining the same height, while at the same time resolving the junction with the new office building, becoming a nexus between the two elements. A prismatic volume abutting the existing building and treated in a similar way penetrates through a large opening into the Senior College, thus articulating the union between the two buildings in a natural way. The complex programme has been divided into two major areas: communal zones and accommodation zones. The community zones are disposed in two storeys below the slope and a half-basement ground floor open to the future public square. This diaphanous ground floor, which contains the vestibule and the restaurant-cafeteria, becomes a prolongation of the open space of the square. The area devoted to bedrooms occupies three floors above the slope and is disposed around a central courtyard that allows daylight to reach the spaces below and at the same time provides a large interior open space for the College. A broad open, bright and versatile space onto which the passages open that lead to the rooms.

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Shelve design for Mooa, by Alis

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Trade Center in St. Cugat del Vallès

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The new conjoined City of Justice of Barcelona and l´Hospitalet de Llobregat

Currently, the various departments of justice of Barcelona and l'Hospitalet de Llobregat are scattered in 17 buildings placed across the two cities, with functional frustrations for both users and employees. A new conjoined City of Justice will improve efficiency and allow working spaces to adapt and absorb the constant transformation of the judicial body along with reserve space for future growth. The site is at the border of the two cities of Barcelona and l'Hospitalet de Llobregat on a site which was previously a military barracks. It is located adjacent to both Gran Via, a major access route into the centre of Barcelona, and Carrilet, an artery leading to l'Hospitalet. The position provides optimum accessibility to the city and major metropolitan routes, on both public and private transport. The most significant proposition breaks up the massive programme requirements (241.519,92 m2) into a series of separate but inter-related buildings on a public plaza, giving a spatial composition that attempts to break the rigid and monolithic image of justice. This proposal also attempts to provide equilibrium to the relationships between the different working areas, public areas and landscape. A group of the six main judicial buildings are situated around the perimeter of a top-lit atrium building and generally contain courtrooms at ground floor and three further floors. All of these floors are accessed directly from the atrium, which acts as a filter. The eleven independent buildings are restrained blocks with load bearing concrete cage facades. The concrete will be coloured with an exposed aggregate finish. The atrium building has a more free form plan with 1 metre deep exposed concrete slabs and woven mesh shading screens in front of frameless glazing. The atrium roof will have two metre deep section concrete beams as a shading system over the main public room for the complex.

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Restricted competition for the construction of a social centre and hospital building

A flat building, a tall one would be prejudicial to the equilibrium that pertains with the other constructions on the site, adapted to the terrain and open to natural light and the landscape. It has a striking appearance, and a perfectly identifiable one seen from a distance.

 The building is organised on the basis of a 7.20 x 7.20 reticule with hierarchical circulation from the exterior towards the interior and with the technical and public circulations strictly separated. The predominance of horizontal relationships and the organisation of the floors, paced by means of interior courtyards-cum-gardens, enables the space and the various health-service functions to be understood easily. The facades reflect two clearly different intentions: on one hand the main facade of the hospital building is more fragmented and colourful and aims to meld with the colours of the surrounding parkland; on the other hand, the facade of the residential building seeks to be much more urbane and contained, lending continuity to the street and the neighbouring buildings. The hospital building has a ground floor and a basement organised along longitudinal south-east to northeast axes containing the hospital and public circulation areas. The general entrances for the Emergency and Rehabilitation departments are located along the public circulation axis. The social-health buildings are distributed around two open access gardens which provide continuity with the rest of the site and with the riverside park. The rooms are located around the gardens and are oriented to receive the correct amount of sunlight. The nursing control facilities and other unit services are located in the angle formed by the L-shaped building.

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The scientific and technological park is designed as an integrated part of the campus, where programmatic needs and the empty spaces are interrelated. The plots occupy the only remaining free perimeter of green areas, providing greater visibility.

Instead of sharing efforts, it is chosen to concentrate them on specific locations, getting landscape features more intense. In particular there will be three green clusters, designed to achieve a direct influence between the management of the buildings. An initial intervention is associated with the corporate image, the second, to the life inside the campus and the most immediate needs of students and, the last one, to the active life.

Two parallel zones accompany these three main areas: one of green bellows and another one between these and the clusters, which is is trusted in the vegetation that ensures minimum maintenance. The landscape program of each cluster will not be allocated on a first phase; it will be created a topographic and planted infrastructure to serve as a starting point for future settlement and the necessities of life on campus.

Within the system of buildings, plants in low areas remain without assigning program that will be in relation to the generation of landscape that is given. In addition, you can add and subtract modules in all ground floors of buildings to achieve maximum visual and physical connection.

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Urban proposal for the Avinguda de la Generalitat axis in the Plaza Eupora centrality area

Competition for the recovery and transformation of some industrial land (about 108,000 m2) located south of the C-242 in Viladecans, on a new urban path. The proposal starts with the recovery of the Avda. de la Generalitat for the conversion of the street in a broad arcaded sidewalks, a new central bus lane and a double lane traffic in both directions. The proposed management has been structured from a small urban grain which can be assimilated and related to the already existing in the old town, built to offer a front of some entity to the new Avda. de la Generalitat, generating a sufficiently flexible urban area that is capable of assuming different uses and situations and a dynamic growth permitting and facilitating an future extension in adjacent areas to the subject of study in future proceedings in a long term. The proposed model city is based in diversity and mix of uses, particularly by encouraging houses with workshops or professional offices on the ground floor and the duplex houses, forming a tapestry with alternation of empty and full. Some ground floors of a certain height allow the variety of uses.

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Ideas competition for the theme pavilion at Expo 2008

The Expo site consists of a series of platforms (ecological roofs) with an organic geometry. The proposal, entered in the competition and winner of the third prize, is based on the creation of an ecological platform as a continuation of the connecting element between the Torre del Agua and the future bridge pavilion. Water is the fundamental articulating theme of the entire complex. The jetty and tower are supported by it, the jetty to become a veritable ship’s deck; while the tower is both founded on water and holds this precious treasure within itself. The exhibition jetty implements a visual sequence based on the relationship between the senses and the states of water, while the tower houses a leisure space where a variety of water-related phenomena are reproduced and where there are surfaces which act as screens for projected images The external skin of the tower, with its glass scales in a multitude of shades, also refers to its composition. Once the Expo is over, the tower will become a glass box whose material will retain the memory of what has happened, as well as being a vantage-point, a lamp that illuminates the cistern and, at night, a torch for the jetty. Images can be projected onto the walls of the cistern (the supplier and container of drinking water for the complex) from the lower part of the tower. In this way, sky and earth will be linked, stressing the vital role of water on the earth.

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Construction of the new World Center in Igualada

La intervención será única, pero quedará cortada en las zonas de unión de las diferentes parcelas, buscando los puntos más transitados del proyecto.

Proposal submitted by b720 Arquitectos, winner in a contest of restricted character convened by the World Trade Centre Igualada. S.A. The proposal responds to the social and economic requirements of the new Igualada, a town in a process of development.

The set comprises four buildings divided into four distinct zones of uses (area offices, commercial area, hotel and parking) generating a recognizable set. The commercial space is positioned as a socket, differing from the upper floors of offices, and maintaining a continuous cornice. Among the commercial space and the offices space a mattress is created, as a large crack shaded, with variable height that breaks its rigidity.

The higher volume of the new World Trade Centre, where are located the offices and hotel rooms, differs from the bottom, moving and generating a gallery deck that serves as a shelter against the rain and as an access to the commercial area.

The outline structure is based on an orderly and repetitive grid. At the extremes, between the second and third building, it is generated some powerful overhangs indicating the turning point of the project and marking the gateway to the city.

The intervention is unique, but falls short in the union areas of the different plots, looking for the most travelled areas of the project.

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