City Hall facilities extension

South facade, general view.

Project details

• Project Name: City Hall facilities extension
• Location of Site: Vicar, Almeria, Spain
• Design Team: Gabriel Verd, Simone Solinas, Nicolas Carbajal
• Project Type: Public Architecture
• Client: Region Andalucia, Province Almeria, Municipality of Vicar
• Contractor/s: HALSA, Hispano Almeria S.L.
• Built-up Area: 3177 sq. mt.
• Cost of Construction: 1095000 euros
• Date of completion: July 2004

South facade, main entrance.

Words from the architect

The client's requirement born after this economic development that has brought with it a growth in the population and therefore the need for new facilities and public services.

South facade, main entrance stairs.

The expansion of the municipal facilities is a lineal construction with a single centreline attached to the existing building and facing south. It is a two-storey construction that follows the slope of the street, with one of the storeys on a semi-basement and the upper at the level of the current building. The new construction houses the municipal police premises and the expansion of the municipal archive, together with the so-called dead archives in the lower storey.

Interior, office.

We worked in order to clearly differentiate its uses and to have versatility in occupations and timetables, the vestibule has been situated between both areas and in keeping with the flow of traffic towards the central courtyard of the current town council.

Secondary entrance.

Materials: The external enclosures are reinforced concrete screen walls, made from aggregates and white cements shuttered in wooden boards, with extrados in the internal face. In the front of the archive area, on a tangent to the external access, the screen has been lined in local stone after projecting the insulation in order to protect this wall and to identify the two uses assigned through the two reddish volumes framed within the structural casing of white concrete. A construction in an abstract language, if you will, associated to its constructional concept, non-imitative and non-critical, as was requested.

Corridor.

In order to ensure proper ventilation and natural light, the new construction is separated by a few metres in order to liberate between both a space in which to situate an access to the vestibule and the evacuation and unloading ramp of the semi-basement. This organisational plan also permits the easy distribution of the new extension with a more reasonable centreline width, a distribution corridor that also enjoys natural light and ventilation, offices with proper dimensions and the possibility of crossed ventilation that might have been compromised otherwise.

Corridor.

Corridor.

Credits

• Text: by solinas + verd arquitectos
• Photographs: Fernando Alda; solinas + verd arquitectos