Project | 2009 | Bilbao | The purpose was to restore an old historicist construction built in the 40s in a corner of the Ensanche in Bilbao and the installation of a corporate headquarters, near the place where COLL-BARREU ARQUITECTOS built the Health Department Headquarters.
The building had been modified internally at different times with shows of very low quality, which had ruined nearly all of the property. The project proposes to consolidate constructive and structurally the façades and to empty the whole inner volume, so as to generate a single room of all building height, open to the two streets through the existing classical windows.
Inside the new room, a group of boxes crosses the air, containing working areas both inside them and also in their roofs. The workplaces acquire urban scale and, at the same time, a great privacy and singularity.
In the basement, an auditorium is directly accessible from the great room. Some open spaces are usable on the roof.
A services spine, visually related to floating boxes, solves the vertical communications, which are mixed people, facilities, supplies and vehicles.