Salamanca Municipal Building

Calle Alonso del Castillo, Salamanca, Spain

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Santa Marta de Tormes Town Hall

Salamanca Municipal Building

Calle Alonso del Castillo, Salamanca, Spain

Firm

Sánchez Gil Arquitectos

Type

Government + Health ›

YEAR

2013

SIZE

1,000,000 +

BUDGET

$10M - 50M

An administrative building has been
projected to host the local office of The Regional Government of Castilla y
Leon at Salamanca, aiming to improve its operations, to cut down costs and to
simplify maintenance.
The building is located in a
residential neighbourhood outlying the east side of the city, on a highly
inclined trapezoidal site surrounded, in two of its sides, by a long dividing
wall which open the patios of the perimeter residential buildings. In its lower part, southwards,
this building´s borders are a public park and a street for both pedestrian and
vehicular access.
It has been decided to project a
free-standing building that enhances its character and reaches optimum flexibility
and functionality, without any starting point coming from the perimeter buildings.
The building is lined up with the street and the park, separated from the
dividing walls, originating a perimeter garden to improve the privacy of users and
the street views in general. The nursery and the event
room can be found on the far south which simulating an sculpted garden combines
volumes and buried patios, avoiding to compete with the great volume of the
administrative building.
The building consists of black
concrete base taking as a reference the access level solving efficiently the
existing drop. It offers additional facilities such us nursery, events room,
multifunctional rooms, cafeteria and parking. A white volume on the base, L
shaped with 2 and 4 floors, is used for the administrative functions.
White concrete garden sheets, piled
up and floating over a black textured concrete base, have been used to get a horizontal
and lightness idea. The vitreous inner walls give an ethereal character to the
building where the horizontal structure is the leading actor. The garden sheets
protect the leaving areas from direct sun and improve habitability, privacy and
visual comfort, reducing energetic costs. The office facades are made of a
glass-like skin with colour variations and transparency using transparent and
pyramidal glasses in two directions, giving tension to this surface.
A squared chain mail is cut
(M=7.20m) to organize the natural growth of the building. The pillar frame is
adjusted according to the modulation planned, 7.20x14.40 m (1Mx2M), originating
a singular structure of exterior cantilevers like garden terraces. The façade
is divided into subsections of 0.90m following a 1-2-1 pace, allowing an easy
change of distribution, predictable in administrative uses.
The building follows a cloistral
model and is organized around three patios, the smallest (2Mx3M) located at the
entrance body, covered at the ground floor by a big skylight, giving form to
the main foyer, and other two plant-lined patios giving shape the tall body
(3Mx4M). Around them a ring circulation is proposed so that offices, with an
opaque screen, are located at the exterior perimeter, while glazed clear
administrative areas are facing the patios bringing light and space to the
corridor. At the inner corners, framing administrative areas, humid and
communications nucleus are distributed.
It stands out specially the space
sequence obtained around the entry and foyer, the real distributor of
circulations at the building, where transparencies, emptiness sequence and a
singular pyramidal skylight create a rich space experience to visitors.