CORPORATE BUILDING COMPETITION
Project (Competition)
Location:
Guadalajara, Jalisco (Mexico)
Area:
16.000 m2 + 20.000 m2 underground parking
Cliente:
Bansi Bank
CORPORATE BUILDING COMPETITION
Project (Competition)
Location:
Guadalajara, Jalisco (Mexico)
Area:
16.000 m2 + 20.000 m2 underground parking
Cliente:
Bansi Bank
BANSÍ requires a building that will serve as an icon for the city, simultaneously contributing to its surroundings with the addition of open public space. That is to say, it requires a corporate building capable of attracting urban attention that also fades into the periphery, passing from the foreground to the background in which the life of the city has its space.
Actually, this duality is clearly understood in the way the client solicited the program distribution: a volume whose height, mass and slenderness (16,000 m2 in 22 floors) would have an urban presence on the metropolitan scale, barely touching the ground at a small point (200m2), leaving the whole of the site for the city and later expanding again below ground to resolve functional details.
What also has an important mass above and contracts to touch the ground in such a small area and expands again underground to establish and settle itself in its environment? To us, the idea of a tree seemed to perfectly embody the requirements of this assignment.
A tree is an element admired as an object, which from a distance has sculptural quality capturing our attention. However, it can also be a means to the end of simply finding a shady spot to sit. From afar, the mass of foliage elevated to a certain height gives it presence, but from close-up, touching the ground at its trunk, views are cleared and everyday activities are received beneath its shade.
It was exactly the tree’s attributes that we wanted to apply to the Bansí project: to arrange the built mass of the solicited program in such a way as to create an urban presence detectable from even large distances but to treat it materially with the lightness of foliage. On the small scale we propose to contract the project to its extreme so that it touches the site only at a structural trunk. This operation allows the passage of views and pedestrian paths. Below ground, we return to a more horizontal development that gives stability to the structure and resolves the exchanges between a building and a city (the flow of people, cars, energy, information services and refuse, etc.) in the same way that roots relate functionally to the tree and its context.
We experimented greatly to effectively achieve a building that was slender but with an urban presence clearly and decidedly freeing the block on which it was located. Square plans achieved certain thinness but invaded the asymmetrical geometry of the site “radiating” its presence over the whole lot. Plans with a more rectangular or even triangular proportion freed up more of the site but failed to achieve a sufficient presence on the urban scale.
We opted to conquer one of the sides of the lot with the largest length possible which we found to have the greatest presence on an urban scale while also maintaining a certain distance with scale of the neighboring residential blocks. The linear form of this side of the site allowed us to protect the new green space from the presence of the highway. The length allowed us to adjust the width of the building until we could work with a simple aisle which had many advantages:
URBAN VARIATION
The strong difference between the length and width of the building creates a great variety of ways in which it is perceived, augmenting the diversity of the volume’s urban perception. From afar, along both directions of Avenida López Mateos, the mass is seen from an angular perspective with a prevailing slender silhouette accentuating its verticality and its condition as a city landmark. As one approaches the figure it mutates into a form of monumental presence almost like a screen over the avenue. It is exactly this position of the volume along the length of the site that protects the newly generated green spaces from the noise and aggressiveness of the highway’s presence. On the small scale, the crujía radically frees the plan from the ground level: this compression not only allows us to create a small landscape in the form of a gentle hill, but also allows us to cut through it, lightening its presence in the immediate context.
ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
The adjusted proportion of the plan width is an operation with two powerful consequences from an environmental perspective. As in all older constructions, a narrow plan (with a short distance within the perimeter and each square meter of usable office space) allows natural light to effectively penetrate each work space, reducing the need for artificial light. The narrow width also permits cross ventilation, one of the most efficient ways of keeping spaces cool. In addition to these two considerations to the nature of the building’s plan, we wanted to treat the skin with the same principles of tree foliage. An exterior skin of perforated metal with a porosity of 66% around the perimeter of the building avoids greenhouse effects without sacrificing transparency, views, nor the ventilation of the interior spaces. The glass panes are hung 70 cm to the interior of the metal in a second layer defining the usable area of the building. The edges of the slabs act as fins that not only protect the interior from the sun, but also allow access for window washing, eliminating the need for complex systems from above. All these operations are simply the rigorous application of common sense and experience accumulated by the practical building traditions forming the base of all sustainability concepts.
FUNCTIONAL FLEXIBILITY AND REAL ESTATE
From a programmatic point of view, a central corridor serving both sides of the circulation is the most flexible of all open plans. In fact, when observing how work spaces are organized in deeper plans, the natural tendency is to decompose the area in multiple modules of workstation-circulation-workstation over a given area. This modularity has important consequences in the work culture of a corporation and from a single circulation in the plan nucleus there is always contact with each of the workstations. Program requiring more space, such as meeting rooms or executive offices, can be located at the ends. Each of the spaces in this layout have the same quality as well as architectural and spatial standard; there are no second rate spaces locked into the plan without an exterior connection.
This same configuration that creates an efficient and democratic open plan allows enormous flexibility and dynamism for the real estate market. A central circulation accessed directly from the vertical circulation nuclei allows the sale and lease of small plans (as small as a single office) with complete autonomy (without requiring the typical restriction of large areas or complete floors) with the possibility of sharing common spaces (secretaries, lounges, bathrooms, etc) in each floor. The location of the elevators and stairs allow the sale or lease of small floors, a combination in high demand in the office market, affordable but with a corporate status.
STRUCTURAL TRANSPARENCY
We wanted to extend the treelike properties to the structural logic of the proposal. A compact central rigid frame is adjusted to the central zone of circulation and services from which tapering beams extend to support the slabs. Concentrating the structure in a central trunk, the perimeters are released and create a total transparency where it is most needed, as well as a functional subdivision in each plan completely independent of the structural rhythm of the tower. The compression of the structure to the neutral fiber of the system allows a greater flexibility for the parking design below ground by opening the perimeter of the plans below ground and making a more efficient system of ventilation and fume extraction. The built mass of the inferior plans function like roots giving an area of support to the structural trunk of the tower.
PUBLIC SPATIALITY
The clearing of the site allowed us to propose a large green space in which one can enjoy the shade projected by the building and sheltered from the car traffic of Avenida López Mateos. The small meadow has a soft slope for water drainage and we proposed the placement of children’s playground designed like works of art. But we also felt that the projects urban contribution should not be confined to the street level. We propose that the top floor should be utilized as a grand lookout over the city with security issues resolved by the perforated metal enveloping the building and creating shade. It is not a coincidence that towers are always judged by the silhouette they carve in the sky and the way they touch the ground. In this case, both operations are a declaration of the urban vocation and the collective consciousness of BANSÍ.
CORPORATE BUILDING COMPETITION
Project (Competition)
Location:
Guadalajara, Jalisco (Mexico)
Area:
16.000 m2 + 20.000 m2 underground parking
Cliente:
Bansi Bank
CORPORATE BUILDING COMPETITION
Project (Competition)
Location:
Guadalajara, Jalisco (Mexico)
Area:
16.000 m2 + 20.000 m2 underground parking
Cliente:
Bansi Bank