The new Roquetas de Mar Town Hall and the expansion of the Plaza de la Constitución, designed by Estudio Carbajal SLP and Estudio Acta, feature an open ground floor that will allow for free movement throughout the building and the central atrium. The ground floor houses public spaces, such as citizen services and the plenary hall. The intermediate levels contain the technical areas, and the building's roof will feature a landscaped solarium for relaxation and socializing.
As one of its essential features, a covered atrium is planned for public use, for holding public events and celebrations. With construction scheduled for 2027, the design prioritizes the optimization of facilities and the selection of simple, easily maintained, and highly durable materials.
New Town Hall of Roquetas de Mar and expansion of the Plaza de la Constitución by Estudio Carbajal SLP and Estudio Acta. Visualization courtesy of Estudio Carbajal SLP and Estudio Acta.
Project description by Estudio Carbajal SLP y Estudio Acta
The rapid transformation of the municipality of Roquetas has resulted in the typical features of contemporary urban sprawl, one of whose most notable characteristics is the absence of an urban center with memory, identity, and urban cohesion. This project aims to create a space that provides the missing elements to consolidate an urban living room in the heart of the city through a design that enhances the virtues of this location. It incorporates the space freed up after the demolition of the buildings that filled the block, creating a public space intended to function as a symbolic and identity-defining center for the community. To this end, the building aligns with the façade of the Parish Church of Our Lady of the Rosary, effectively doubling the area of the Plaza de la Constitución. The resulting volume is carved and perforated at ground level to ensure permeability between the Plaza de la Constitución and the Plaza Luis Martín-C/ Duque de Ahumada intersection. The carving is achieved by opening up the corner of Cid Street to improve views and pedestrian flow, while the perforation consists of creating a possible passageway on the ground floor through the building, crossing the central atrium that organizes it.
Controlling its scale and urban presence has been a key aim of the project. Following this premise, it draws on the scale and formal structure of the neighboring Parish Church and the nearby Historical Museum, attempting to contribute to the urban landscape of the renovated plaza with a neutral image that emphasizes the continuity of the ground floor space and the opening of the central balcony (the quintessential identifying element of the institutional image in the collective memory of the citizens), both marked by the depth of the shadows.
Ultimately, the proposal addresses the precarious situation of the current City Hall building—the result of a succession of buildings and diverse spaces added over the years—which is unable to meet the institutional, functional, accessibility, energy efficiency, or simply spatial needs it requires. Thus, the design decisions involved in relation to the implementation and configuration of the building seek to guarantee the achievement of diverse demands such as transparency, accessibility, sustainability, versatility, contemporaneity or functionality that guarantee this desire to build a new institutional headquarters capable of meeting current needs and taking on future ones.
Essentially, the organizational structure places public-facing spaces (citizen services, plenary hall, access control, etc.) on the ground floor, technical areas on the intermediate levels, and meeting and relaxation areas on the roof. It addresses a dual need: facilitating the work of its users while simultaneously providing service to the public. To achieve this, open, well-lit, and ventilated spaces have been designed, creating a spacious and flexible environment that is both useful and comfortable. Clear circulation routes are easily identifiable by visitors, and appropriate spaces are available for each service that requires it. The design incorporates a versatile structure that can adapt to changing needs over time, thanks to the open floor plans and the structural modules used, which allow for both open and partitioned workspaces. The separate circulation routes (public and private) in their respective cores, and even the modular facade enclosures (which offer the possibility of dividing work areas into different surfaces), effectively realize this premise of flexibility and adaptability. The distribution of the bays, planned around the large atrium void, allows for communication between work areas and tangential and transverse circulation between them without interference. The support of services, communications, and amenities concentrated at both ends ensures this versatility. All of this will allow for the organization of spaces into homogeneous areas on different levels, designed by harmonizing criteria of internal organization, efficiency, and suitability for serving the public, while ensuring the well-being and comfort of the workers thanks to the amenities, square meter ratio per workstation, lighting, ventilation, safety, ergonomics, and accessibility of the spaces created.
The concept of the covered atrium as a large public space for diverse activities and events, and the building's rooftop as a landscaped solarium that can become a meeting place and relaxation area in the best Mediterranean tradition, are essential characteristics of the project. Also key are the building's orientation and the layout of the workspaces, as well as the use of sunshades on the most exposed facades and the distinct treatment of the building envelopes, which responds to the urban characteristics of each facade and its solar orientation.
This volumetric organization, in addition to formally controlling the urban space, allows, thanks to its form factor and the presence of the central courtyard, for improved bioclimatic conditions within the building, based on its solar orientation and controlled air circulation. The rational approach to functional, constructive and structural solutions, their modularity and ease of execution in order to favor maintenance and economy of future operation, the choice ultimately of solutions tested in buildings of this type and in this sense, the optimization of the proposed installations and the choice of materials according to criteria of simplicity, robustness, proximity, easy conservation and maximum durability, have guided the project.
