Police Station, Fuencarral-El Pardo
07/02/2013.
By Voluar Arquitectura. [MAD] Spain
metalocus, SERGIO CIDONCHA
metalocus, SERGIO CIDONCHA
Memory of Project
The general design of the project answers mainly to the adequacy of its to the environment. The building is set back from the property line leaving a free space that works as a public urban development and allowing the pedestrian access. This gives continuity to the city in order to promote the rapprochement of the citizen to a public building, by tradition, used to be considered as closed and hermetic place.
On the other hand, the building is meant in the environment, offering an architectural landmark reference to the city, thanks to its modern and rotund image. The project tries to change the relationship between a state-owned building and the community through layers of transparency.
From a distance, the facade gives to the building a clear and massive appearance. From proximity, the facade’s skin is only a light film whose transparency allows magnificent views of the city from privacy. The anodized aluminum mesh screens that are periodically perforated to control depth of field and light penetration. These panels create visual impedance towards the interior during the day while allowing undisturbed views to the surrounding city, at night, the building glows with light to expose the inner functions to the outside world.
Anodized aluminum gives to the building image a constantly changing, responding to the lights and chromatics variations along day and seasons. In the same way, the degrees of drilling makes the facade seems different according to the observer’s position.
The arcaded plant establishes a separation between the public facility and private office areas and sets a transition space.
Inside, all the work areas are organized around an empty space, a large full-height interior patio and sets up the dialogue between the private area and public spaces. The unifying element of the project is the light that comes through skylights in this atrium. This space, combined with the use of glass in the work units gives all the space inside a panopticon character both horizontally and vertically.
The private spaces by contrast are easily distinguishable as cantilevered solid cubes protruding out of the glass box, and a series of terraces and patios that appear on the facade.
Text: Voluar Arquitectura.
CREDITS:
Main architects: Pablo Rodríguez Mesa, Borja Lomas Rodríguez.
Team collaborators: Teresa Gómez Benito, Alfredo Diez Torre, Noemí Martínez Pozo, Lorenza Grandi, Juan Carlos Argüello.
Date: 2008.
Project: Police Station, Fuencarral-El Pardo´s District.
Surface: 6.770 m2.
Site: Mirador de la Reina nº 4, Madrid. Spain.
Voluar Arquitectura office was founded in Madrid in 2006, combining the experience and freshness of its partners. Nowadays it relies on a team with collaborators from different disciplines directed by Pablo Rodríguez Mesa (1963 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) and Borja Lomas Rodríguez (1977 Madrid).
Voluar develops all kind of architectural projects, interior design and urbanism, always trying to get away from the obvious and making a personal architecture, thinking in the customer, the user, the city and sustainability. The result is functional and current projects, friendly with the environment and its surroundings.
In the last years, we have participated in numerous architectural competitions and have built a wide range of projects: industrial buildings, offices, institutional buildings, social housing, interior design and private housings.
Voluar design an architecture compromised with the challenges of our time, especially with new ways of living and working today.