Nearing completion. Madrid Metro Integral Transportation Center by Nexo + Gutiérrez-de la Fuente + Andrés Perea

Description of project by Nexo Arquitectura, Gutiérrez-de la Fuente Arquitectos, and Andrés Perea Arquitecto

OPENING AN OLD INDUSTRIAL ENCLAVE TO THE CITY THROUGH AN INSTITUTIONAL SET

- An institutional complex for a new transportation hub

The CIT is an initiative of Metro de Madrid to build a Comprehensive Transportation Center on the site of the old garages in Plaza de Castilla (Avenida de Asturias, Madrid), which went out to tender in 2016 and in which the team made up of the architects Lourdes Carretero, Manuel Leira, Julio de la Fuente, Andrés Perea, and Iván Carbajosa, was the winner. The project has a double objective, on the one hand, the urban regeneration through a site that housed an obsolete yard installation dedicated to storage, cleaning, and maintenance of cars, and on the other hand the centralization of office spaces and services related to transport in the Community of Madrid and the already centennial Madrid Metro. The new Metro de Madrid Headquarters will be the first part of the Integral Transport Center, which will be joined by the new Control and Operations Center of the Metro CCOR network (New Command Post and COMMIT), the Regional Transport Consortium, and the Museum of Transport. In the future, a fifth endowment building may also be included that could be developed by the City Council on its plot, thus completing the block.

The complex works around a central industrial garden. The different buildings are connected at their level below ground by a series of service spaces, facilities, and car parks that unite the whole below level 723.50M, the level of the Garden. All buildings are framed within the principles of efficiency and building standards with almost zero energy consumption.

- A new urban acropolis, Metro de Madrid making a city

One of the keys of the urban project, of this institutional acropolis, is the visual and physical permeability that allows articulating the relationship between the built, the central garden, and the urban context. It is a new urban structure that clarifies the space of the street redefining the alignments of Avenida de Asturias, San Benito, Magnolias, and San Aquilino streets, and that of the Interior Garden. The history of the Metropolitan company is present in the management through level 723.50M, which was the existing level of operations of the original deposit. This platform was disconnected from the topographic logic of the neighborhood, responding only to an operational reason for the mobility of cars and Metro rolling stock. The challenge of the proposal was from the beginning to maintain this topographic legacy while reconnecting the plot with its surroundings. This is achieved through physical connections between the buildings, solving universal accessibility, and through a new walkway that crosses the plot in a North-South direction, connecting Carrer de la Vinca with Avenida de Asturias, reducing the size of the urban plot. A new habitat for workers, neighbors, and visitors.
 
The Integral Transportation Center tries to create a space that Madrid residents remember, where they want to go to feel like citizens. That place that does not exist in the surroundings of the Plaza de Castilla. Still.

- Architecture, a fragmented urban identity

The volumetric fragmentation of the CIT is a project proposal of capital importance, to be able to develop the project in different phases without problems, according to this type of process today. A series of buildings of different scales and programs can create a strong urban identity by simple addition. The buildings have marked volumes with permeable and sloping roofs, which house gardens, and which recall the profiles of the industrial buildings of the old warehouse, in addition to dialoguing in the vicinity with the neighboring KIO towers. This collection of roofs builds a new urban landmark in the collection of corporate buildings that define, for the moment, the northern Madrid skyline. But this time from the institutional and the collective.

The lower floors of the buildings are as permeable as possible to connect the most public programs with the Central Garden and create a cross-view through the CIT.

The materiality of the buildings is dominated by the structure of precast reinforced concrete exterior screens, turning the structure into a changing façade as one travels from east to west. The commitment to prefabrication is transferred to the interior of the workspaces with the exposed slabs of precast T slab that include perforations for the passage of facilities. The structure and facilities are understood from the only discipline of bioclimatic. The building is lowered in its contact with the ground in a series of metallic pillars, double HEM, and V, of color arming in resonance with the old structures of the garages.

- The legacy of Metro de Madrid, a circular strategy for the future

The central garden, Garden 1 Metro (about the old garages of Line 1) is a new "metrero" park that aims to maintain the legacy of the space of the old garages. A new space that talks about the infrastructures that have made Madrid a great capital, and that embodies a contemporary attitude to recover, update, and reuse. An exercise in contemporary urban archeology.

At all times, it seeks to minimize waste with a strategy based on circular economy principles. The platform is at elevation 723.5, the current elevation of the plot, reducing the volume of land to be managed. In the premise of reduction and recycling of materials, historical elements of the old garages are reused for the final finishes.
The history of the place will be present in many aspects, but it takes special relevance in the central garden built from the existing structure of the garages and its furniture elements such as metal stairs, automatic doors, masts, roads ... that maintain their yellow color of maximum visibility and so present in the industrial culture of Metra. Highlight the recycling of the ballast tank, still on the plot, which will become an urban landmark in the main access to the Garden. The heritage of the place, renaturalized, serves as inspiration. A landscape hybrid emerges in Plaza Castilla: Jardín 1.

Rainwater will infiltrate through ditches and infiltration wells that serve as the garden's drainage and reduce the need for irrigation. The water that circulates in an irrigation canal refreshes the environment, creates life, and seeing it relaxes us; This sheet of water follows the tracks of the tracks and incorporates aquatic vegetation. The green steps to access the garden will have vegetation and draining pavements to allow water infiltration and avoid overheating.
For plant species, their local agroclimatic adaptation is taken into account, prioritizing autochthonous species. Maximum biodiversity was also sought, with the presence of flowers all year round, to attract, feed and shelter the maximum possible fauna, and with vegetation in flowerbeds that favored the creation of biotopes. Trees to regulate humidity, store CO2, and oxygenate the air, as well as generate shady spaces and purify rainwater.

- Ecology, beyond sustainability

The energy strategy proposed in the building from the contest itself did not only result in zero energy consumption in its use phase (EECN), but all the systems (structural, constructive, installations, architectural design) were raised oriented towards reduction of energy embedded in the materials, reduction of demand with the design of the envelope and the form factor, use of tempering strategies for air conditioning, and for the thermal envelope through vegetation, self-generation of energy and optimization of facilities equipment. The reduction of the environmental footprint, passive and active strategies are achieved in practically all systems.

The commitment to renewable energy is clear. Only for the new Metro Headquarters, there are a series of 56 geothermal wells and a collection of 512 photovoltaic solar modules.
The comfort of the employees is a key variable, for which an air conditioning system based on a mesh of cold beams has been proposed, which are housed in the inter-axes of the precast T-beams.

Regarding Energy and Environmental Certifications, the tool used in the simulation has been EnergyPlus, Version 8.9.0-eba93e8e1b. The Radiance 5.0 tool has been used for radiation calculations. Reaching the previous results, the energy rating of the project is class A.

The complex will be certified with the GREEN tool, whose methodology is based on an approach to the Life Cycle Analysis. A series of criteria are defined to reduce the environmental, social, and economic impacts of the project. The impacts evaluated in VERDE NE Equipamientos, Ω version, are climate change, emissions to the atmosphere, land, and water, changes in biodiversity, depletion of non-renewable energy, depletion of drinking water, depletion of resources, generation of waste, impacts on the neighborhood, accessibility, health and comfort, economic aspects due to savings in the cost of the life cycle. The project includes the largest number of feasible measures to achieve the highest possible score.

- The interior of the building

The interior of the building is resolved through its constructive elements, the prefabricated and industrialized lexicon of concrete in the standard floors, the set of stone levels of this radiator building floats on a ground floor that perches on the level of the garages with elements light.

The central point of the project called "core", solves the server spaces, from the communications to the storage spaces, offers a nod to the first wooden elements of the Metro's past, adding warmth to space
On the ground floor, the metal structure dialogues with the elements of the garden, creating a yellow-tinted meter universe, called in the project as Metro's operating color, at the east and west ends the structure is triangulated showing the industrial character of the project.

In the hall that connects Avenida de Asturias with the interior garden we find elements that emphasize the company's legacy, a large metro-bench wants to summarize the iconic seating spaces of the metropolitan, and in the double-height of the central space, we find the Metro lamp, a luminous set of the 12 Metro lines that build a new multi-plane of light that lights up with the hectic and daily activity of the company.