Flexibility and polyvalence. New Headquarters FLC Valencian Community by MRM arquitectos

Description of project by MRM arquitectos

The new headquarters of the Fundación Laboral de la Construcción de la Comunidad Valenciana (FLCCV) is located in an agricultural and semi-industrial landscape. The large plot is surrounded by fields of olive and fruit trees and is bordered on the north side by the Carraixet ravine.

The building has a simple and clear image, a series of different linked volumes that transmit, as a whole, the institutional representativeness that a building of these characteristics should suggest: a volumetric and constructive clarity capable of reaffirming the educational work and values that the Foundation carries out in it. Its location and design are defined based on a formal and functional arrangement pattern of independent pieces or volumes grouped through a pergola plan that communicates and unites all the buildings under its modulated modulation and constructive order.

Given the complexity of uses and relationships of the different areas, the building is organized on a single floor, without architectural barriers, around two outdoor courtyards of a different character. These patios become key parts of the internal functioning, either for outdoor practices (work patio) or as spaces for relationships, communication, and rest (leisure patio).

The layout of the pieces and the separation between uses allows for optimal functioning, great acoustic insulation, high natural light capture, flexibility and versatility of uses, and independent or simultaneous sectorization and programming in the building, guaranteeing an effective separation between them.

Towards the exterior, the different volumetric characteristics give the complex its representativeness. Mainly the workshops, with a greater height, and occasionally the assembly hall and offices with their volumes of skylights. The rest of the program of classrooms, offices, and changing rooms is partially located under the roof plane.

The new building's architecture provides the best space and functional, environmental, and natural lighting conditions for optimal theoretical and practical training. In this sense, the use of natural light in the different classrooms and workshops is resolved according to their teaching needs: the workshops are illuminated through skylights oriented mainly to the north-northeast and the rest of the rooms through openings in the façade with exterior sunlight control.

In the design of the building, the dialectic use of the structure is especially important, orderly, and always visible, resolved with the same constructive spirit as the rest of the materials and solutions used. A building whose finishes are a reflection of its construction process, using the construction details as a fundamentally visual resource.