Offices in Leganés
February 2009, Leganés, Madrid, Spain
Leganés is a satellite city belonging to the Greater Madrid Conurbation. The city has numerous sports areas and urgently needs a place to centralize all management: the CRD (Centro de Recursos para el Deporte).
The City Hall owns a site, shaped as a quarter-circle, on the intersection of two busy streets. The regulations about alignments, setbacks , and occupancy applicable to this site, are strict and determinant. The total surface area of the required programme is not stable and might double in a few years, or shrink, as the case may be.
This will be the generative concept of our proposal: a building that can grow and shrink gracefully within short periods of time.
We attempt to occupy as much of the surface area as possible in order to be able to arrange the entire programme over two floors, rather than the expected three, thus minimizing the use of elevators and stairs. This will offer more flexibility as the building is less fragmented. Following the strict regulations of alignments and setbacks we create a smooth curvature of the site outline. A continuous polycarbonate facade will draw the perimeter in, folding in the corners, to avoid useless angles, and folding in the middle to manifest clearly the entrance to the building. It also creates an welcoming inner courtyard protected from the busy avenues, which will bring light and ventilation to the entire building and will satisfy the regulation concerning the maximum area to be built.
The façade has an air chamber acting as a chimney that will avoid the loss of heat in winter, and attracting heat in summer
To grow or to shrink. Economic Sustainability.
By elevating the ground-level of the building one metre off street level we bring natural light and ventilation to the basement, which may be used for office and working space in the future, adding more than 40% extra surface area to the administration programme. A second patio, connected to the main one, will reach the basement to give it more light and spatial quality. We oversize the room height up to 3,2 m in order to adapt better to a possible future change of programme. The only fixed elements in the building are the façade line, composed of 70 thin metallic pillars, and the three concrete cores of the circulations, which provide stability to the building and contain all the installations and services, freeing up the remaining space and allowing maximum flexibility to be completely diaphanous or compartmented.
If, by contrast, the CDR needs to shrink, the geometry in the plan makes it possible – practically from one day to the next – to change the building to be rented by three different parties, each of which will have one of the service-circulation cores at his disposal.
Sustainability is understood as an intelligent strategy for durability. We are tired of the growing downgrading of this concept.
This will be presented in 4 proposals, according to four levels of investment, that all fulfil the required demands. The difference between them is related to the amount of future surface area available for growth. We decide to develop option D, the option realising the biggest potential.
Site: Geometry Quarter of circle
Regulations: Setbacks and maximum occupancy
Quality: Patio brings light to -1, 0, +1
Smoothening: Generation of the access + public space, elimination of useless corners
options A, B, C, and D
– – –
Title: Suave
Project name: Center for Sports management in Leganés
Date: February 2009
Type: Open International Competition
Organizer: OCAM
Participants: 210
Location: Leganés, Madrid, Spain
Site: Corner between Avenida del Rey Juan Carlos and Avenida de Europa
Programme: Offices for sports management, medical center, outdoor spaces, parking
Surface: Total 3.070 m²; above ground: 1.743 m², underground 1.326 m²
Status: Competition
Client: Leganés City Council
Budget: € 3,6 Mill.
Exhibitions: Leganés: Deporte y Gestión, OCAM, Madrid, Spain. March 26 – April 20, 2009
STAR Team: Beatriz Ramo, Simone de Iacobis, Jean-Vianney Deleersnyder, Iñigo Paniego