The Project is a small showroom and the design center
for a company specialized in office furniture.
The site of the project is inside a terrain of commercial use where the
furniture is manufactured for the Ofimodul Company in Monterrey N.L., Mexico.In this space both the first and the last steps of
the manufacturing process of the furniture should be unified: the design stage
as well as their exhibition and sale.It was chosen to make an intervention that will put
in manifest each program of the building, making a constructive operation that
transcends the site’s structure, composed by one side of the manufacture
building (factory) and by the other a loading and parking area for trucks, both
already existing in the terrain.So the building is formed by two parts, one heading
to the front yard of the terrain and the other that is embedded in the
factory. Each part is separated one from
the other by a different ground level and by a basic services core. The exterior part of the building was built over
a former parking lot, as a condition that the same program will be respected in
the intervention. This way the volume
rise over the vehicles of directives and clients and its connected with the
interior part of the building, built over a former storage space of the factory
that is now used for the design and monitoring of what takes place inside the
warehouse were the furniture is manufactured, so it requires a high degree of
acoustic insulation between both activities.This way half the interior part of the building
(inside the manufacture area) is closed and opaque meanwhile the other half in
the exterior (front yard) is open and almost transparent, because is there
where the access and exhibition zone of the finished furniture takes place,
making its function of a big shelter.A wall of concrete and metal column serve as a
mainstay of the building, across a flat slab structure that determine the
mezzanine and the roof. The mezzanine floor slab is perforated to generate the
access side a metal ladder which shows the structural strain of the slab and
supporting wall. The finishes of the building are as simple as
possible and consistent with the capacity building and the industrial tradition
of this city in northern Mexico:
concrete, steel and glass. Concrete for the main building structure, finish
apparent in walls and slabs for floors and polished interiors. Steel forges
bearing coatings and window, details such as doors, railings and stairs, the
structural element in a column. Glass transparent to generate the identity of
the building, following the logic of its function. The materiality of the
project is bound to the importance of companies located in this part of the
country, whose main products are just concrete, steel and glass. The blacksmith
made directly in the workshops of the company manufacturing office furniture,
try to also recognize the labor of it as an integral part of the proposal.
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