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Ministerio de Trabajo
Ministerio de Trabajo
San José Province, Costa Rica
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Other Projects by ICESA S.A. Ingeniería, Ciudad, Espacio y Arquitectura
Ministerio de Trabajo
San José Province, Costa Rica
Type
STATUS
Built
YEAR
1996
SIZE
25,000 sqft - 100,000 sqft
BUDGET
$5M - 10M
Design competitions are rare in Costa Rica’s architectural culture. In the late 1980s, ICESA entered and won a private competition to design the central offices of the Banco Cooperativo Costarricense — Bancoop — producing one of the firm’s most structurally ambitious works.
The building is organized around two rectangular volumes articulated by a linear light gap between them. Every floor shifts southward relative to the one below, a single move that generates consequences at every scale. Spatially, the stepped cantilevers carve out a five-story atrium at the entrance and an eight-story void at the canteen — a great empty volume that gives the institution its public character, orders the activities of each floor around its section, and calibrates the entry of natural light as the day progresses. Each floor’s stair and vestibule follow the stepping, which means every level must be rethought programmatically in relation to the atrium and its own position within the cascade. Constructively, the movement challenges gravity. An extensive steel structure with diagonally inclined trusses accompanies the displacement of each floor, maintaining structural coherence under an asymmetric load. The structure is expressed on the interior and partially visible on the exterior, most legibly along the emergency stair on the west facade. Formally, the two clear rectangular volumes provide a severe orthogonal base — grey prefabricated panels in a stepped composition — against which an intense red steel structure marks the anomalies, the joints, and the pleasure of the design.
Bancoop never occupied the building it commissioned. It passed to the Banco Central de Costa Rica and shortly after to its current occupant, the Ministerio de Trabajo. Through successive changes of program and user, the building has retained most of its original spatial concepts intact — though not without losing some of its urban spaces to security fencing. Its vocation as a public institution endures.
The building is organized around two rectangular volumes articulated by a linear light gap between them. Every floor shifts southward relative to the one below, a single move that generates consequences at every scale. Spatially, the stepped cantilevers carve out a five-story atrium at the entrance and an eight-story void at the canteen — a great empty volume that gives the institution its public character, orders the activities of each floor around its section, and calibrates the entry of natural light as the day progresses. Each floor’s stair and vestibule follow the stepping, which means every level must be rethought programmatically in relation to the atrium and its own position within the cascade. Constructively, the movement challenges gravity. An extensive steel structure with diagonally inclined trusses accompanies the displacement of each floor, maintaining structural coherence under an asymmetric load. The structure is expressed on the interior and partially visible on the exterior, most legibly along the emergency stair on the west facade. Formally, the two clear rectangular volumes provide a severe orthogonal base — grey prefabricated panels in a stepped composition — against which an intense red steel structure marks the anomalies, the joints, and the pleasure of the design.
Bancoop never occupied the building it commissioned. It passed to the Banco Central de Costa Rica and shortly after to its current occupant, the Ministerio de Trabajo. Through successive changes of program and user, the building has retained most of its original spatial concepts intact — though not without losing some of its urban spaces to security fencing. Its vocation as a public institution endures.
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