The new police station for the Gijón Local Police has been designed by SSARQ and MCVR Arquitectos on a plot located between the orthogonal grid of the Pumarín Industrial Estate and the railway city line, which acts as a physical boundary for this area of ​​the Spanish city of Gijón.

The projected volume is introduced horizontally into the urban grid from a corner of the plot, rising towards the south until it reaches the height of the façade of the surrounding buildings. The adjoining buildings condition the volume in the northeast-southwest direction, while the railway line generates the layout that regulates the building in its perpendicular direction.

The layout of the program proposed by SSARQ and MCVR Arquitectos is based on the degree of privacy and security required for each space, allowing for great flexibility and adaptability over time. The public and social areas are arranged horizontally, while the private offices and the control and management areas of the local police force are located in a vertical volume that dominates and configures the public space in front of the building.

The complex is wrapped with a curtain of micro-perforated profiled sheet metal, which creates a filter between the interior and the exterior, and which gives the building a continuous image, hiding the different courtyards that we find both in the horizontal and vertical volumes. Thanks to these courtyards, a variety of interior spaces are generated that remain in constant relationship with the exterior.

Police Station for the Gijón Local Police by SSARQ + MCVR Arquitectos. Photograph by Fernando Alda.

Police Station for the Gijón Local Police by SSARQ + MCVR Arquitectos. Photograph by Fernando Alda.

Project description by SSARQ + MCVR Arquitectos

The project is located on a plot that is in contact with the friction between the orthogonal grid of the Pumarín Industrial Estate and the railway line, which is completely foreign to it. The project and its extension towards the new park are conditioned from the northwest by the linear axis of the track, from the northeast by the scheme of repetition of volumes of the previous building and at the same time an institutional response is considered in the southwest towards the public open space in the extension of Puerto San Isidro Street.

The proposal is materialized by occupying the northern end of the plot, generating a finish to the built mass. A low volume is introduced, while towards the south another higher, sharp volume is raised, reaching the height of the façade of the surrounding buildings. This operation allows for better light exposure and views for the neighbors, the impact of the new volume is minimized and the building is integrated by offering a fifth façade on the low landscaped roof. Although the adjacent buildings determine the volume in the northeast-southwest direction, the road generates the layout that regulates the building in the perpendicular direction. A series of parallel axes are arranged that define bands that, in turn, give rise to the entire implementation scheme of the complex. A weft and a warp are thus established that completely order the project in three dimensions.

Comisaría para la Policía Local de Gijón por SSARQ + MCVR Arquitectos. Fotografía por Fernando Alda.
Police Station for the Gijón Local Police by SSARQ + MCVR Arquitectos. Photograph by Fernando Alda.

The program is inserted in internal organizational levels, segregating the different areas and functions that are grouped in bands subject to the axes parallel to the railway. In the perpendicular axes, a freer layout is allowed that inserts the different patios within the large ground floor, which enable large but naturally lit office spaces although they are far from the façade. As the building rises, the program becomes more private, such that most public contingencies are resolved on the ground floor, the internal common services on the first floor and the rest on the top floors.

The layout of the courtyards not only provides an entrance of light, but also allows the entire program to be more flexible, easily and structuredly absorbing possible alterations that may occur over time. In addition, when these courtyards are located on the upper floors, open-air spaces are generated at least once per floor.

Comisaría para la Policía Local de Gijón por SSARQ + MCVR Arquitectos. Fotografía por Fernando Alda.
Police Station for the Gijón Local Police by SSARQ + MCVR Arquitectos. Photograph by Fernando Alda.

On the outside, the building appears as a greyish volume on two levels that dematerializes when it comes into contact with the ground to expose the glass and, as it moves south, rises towards the sky. This provides total transparency to the work of the civil servants, while to the south the entire large curtain wall and the plaza of the northwest exposure are protected from direct sunlight. It is built with a zinc skin, like a light filter. This material is selected from the environment, practically indelible and deeply related to both the color of the sky and the color of the soil of Asturias. The folds of this skin stiffen the trays while allowing a relationship with the special and nuanced light that varies with the path of the sun. Its microperforation continuously resolves the waterproofing of the blind parts of the façade without obscuring the views where the glass exists and, ultimately, allows the building to disintegrate when it comes into contact with the air.

Finally, at night, the quality of the building is reversed, transforming into a large lighthouse that lights up the park while welcoming those who come to Gijón from the westernmost of its three main entrances.

More information

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Architects
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SSARQ Serrano-Suñer Architecture Office + MCVR Arquitectos. Lead architects.- Fernando Serrano-Suñer, Marcos Cortes Lerin, Victor Rodriguez Prada.

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Collaborators
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Quantity Surveyor.- Hugo Sánchez De La Viña.
MEP Engineering.- Urculo Ingenieros.
Structural Engineer.- Miguel Fernández Schmitz.
Facade Engineering.- Envolventes Arquitectónicas.

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Builder
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Acciona.

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Developer
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Ayuntamiento de Gijón/Xixón.

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Area
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10,757.75 sqm.

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Dates
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Competition.- 2017.
Completed.- 2024.

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Location
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Gijón, Asturias. Spain.

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Budget
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€ 9.000.000.

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Photography
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SSARQ (Serrano-Suñer Architecture Office). Architecture office based in Madrid founded in 2008 by Fernando Serrano-Suñer, made up of creative minds, architects, designers and technical engineers with a vision: quality, sustainability and innovation.

Their work aims to integrate sustainability, technology and contemporary design in our projects, under the idea of ​​constant learning seeking to maintain the perfect balance between innovation and tradition.

Since its creation, the studio has had a notable activity focusing its work on renovations and new constructions, mainly housing, offices and educational projects. SSARQ is the studio responsible for carrying out all the expansion and extension projects of the IE University campus in Madrid and Segovia.

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MCVR arises in 2014 as a natural evolution of the coincidence in Madrid of architects Marcos Cortes Lerín and Víctor Rodríguez Prada, graduates of ETSAVA and ETSAC, based on the interests shared by the founders.

The company actively participates in the transversal development of projects, establishing collaborations with other architects, studios and professionals, which rotate around the research intention of the collective space and the adoption of the results obtained in various types of use. This work has allowed an approach to other modes of thinking and operatives, resulting in collaborations such as the one developed during the Venice Biennale 2016.

Office buildings, services, exhibitions and, in general, the links of these with the public space, have shaped from the beginning the office's own work, which has focused its efforts on public sector competitions. Multiple recognitions of this work have finally been consolidated in the construction of the Air Bubble Office for the SECAD in Kunshan, the intervention for an emergency staircase in Valdemoro, the Local Police Station in Gijón and in other commissions such as the AA308 Offices in Dehesas.

In addition to the professional work, the studio has combined teaching and research work, which has been included in some publications such as Proyecto. Progreso. Architecture, monographs such as Sanaa Rolex Learning Center, scientific articles and the thesis 'Tel Aviv 1932-1939. From experience in the West to experiment in the East' and 'Herman Hertzberger, 1990-2000. Continuity, variation and divergence of the poetics of Team X in 1960'. This experience has allowed the development of dissemination and cooperation activities between different institutions such as the Cervantes Institute in Beijing or the ETSAM itself.

Currently the studio maintains its activity, betting on a physical relocation, halfway between Madrid and Ponferrada, in an attempt to bring together two different realities through the same space of thought, which is still under construction.
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Published on: November 20, 2024
Cite: "Apparently continuity. Police Station for the Local Police by SSARQ + MCVR Arquitectos" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/apparently-continuity-police-station-local-police-ssarq-mcvr-arquitectos> ISSN 1139-6415
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