Spatial richness, minimalist expression. Arquia Bank Offices, in Madrid by Tuñón y Albornoz arquitectos
19/01/2023.
[MAD] Spain
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
Project description by Tuñón y Albornoz Arquitectos
Behind the façade of an industrial building located on Calle Tutor in Madrid, which housed a printing press at the beginning of the 20th century, the new offices of Arquia Bank and the Arquia Foundation are installed.
The new four-story construction, which houses the new administrative building, is discreetly hidden behind the protected façade, staggered to leave the remains of the old industry in the foreground, without affecting the current section of the street, to favour the scale and the luminosity of this section of the street.
On the first floor, a lobby with a small dimension in the plan rises up to the roof of the first terrace, opening on its roof a skylight that introduces light into the space. Several spaces on the first floor open their eyes to the lobby, playing asymmetrically with the gaps in the existing façade.
The lobby gives way to the vertical communication core and to a single multifunctional space that, in turn, opens onto the small garden that is inserted into the courtyard of the block.
Arquia Bank Offices, in Madrid by Tuñón y Albornoz arquitectos. Photograph by Luis Asín.
On the upper floors are the administrative spaces that open onto the different landscaped terraces, giving great light to all spaces.
Walls and ceilings are covered with white lacquered wood as if it were a ship.
The protected façade, made of pressed brick, marks the construction of the stepped façades, as well as that of the façade behind the courtyard of the block. All the exterior walls are perforated with large holes, on an almost industrial scale, establishing links with the construction that once existed in that same place.
And it is that this construction wants to be a simple tribute to those small industries that developed in the area at the beginning of the last century, and also wants to present the respect that the citizens of Madrid have for its humble industrial past.