1st Prize Design Competition 2002
Finalist VI Saloni Prize of Architecture 2006. Castellón. Spain
Proposed Mies Van Der Rohe Prize 2007. Barcelone. Spain
Finalist IX Biennial of Spanish Architecture and Urban. Ministerio de Vivienda. Madrid. Spain
FAD Prize. Architecture and Interior Design 2007. ARQ-InFAD. Barcelone. Spain
Finalist Prize of Spanish Architecture 2007. C.S.C.A.E. Madrid. Spain
Finalist AIT Awards 2008. Best of Office Category. Köln, Germany
Located on the outskirts of the town of Antequera in Malaga, this lot intended for the Judicial Seat will be completed by the National Security Corps buildings. It is situated within a recently built and growing residential area.
With few initial attractions, the dialogue between the site and the architecture was very limited; the only interesting factor being its dimensions. A forced autonomy led us to consider a contained and compact architecture resulting in a longitudinal building, placed on a public platform from which a prism shaped Court tower emerges. Without renouncing its great representative capacity, the objective was to design a building that adequately met the functional needs of its visitors and workers, and at the same time was appropriately scaled to its surroundings. It appears a dense structure, although at the same time one that boasts a very human interior, pursuing solid and robust values without forgetting concepts such as transparency and clarity, of course fundamental elements of the way that Justice itself is handed down.
The compactness of the program and the results of the volumetric analysis pursued an expressive effect that will transmit an important measure of solidity as opposed to abstraction. The choice of the material and tonality of the facade played very important roles in achieving the former. The uniform hue of the surface finish was created over a striated vertical mold broken both in depth and separation obscuring the vertical joints between panels, lending itself to a more monolithic quality that is only fragmented in the profound spaces existing in the public common areas.
The main entrance emerges through a vestibule from which the scale and public dimension of the building can be perceived. Here, only minimal elements of articulation and control segregate the necessary circulation between distinct areas. The main distinction occurring in this expanse is found in the two-story space and the south-facing openings, the primary aim of the two-story space being the organization of movement, information and access to the building, while the openings reveal public access space reserved for Visitation Rooms and Forensics. This linear organization occurring along the length of the facades, seeks to present a clear solution to the inevitable problem that occurs in any judicial building: the separation of the private and public sectors. We solved this restriction through an outward facing corridor of slats, with a specific vertical communication.
The usage most directly related to the public will take place on the ground and first floors of the building. This might include the Civil Registry, Forensic Clinic, Visitation Rooms, Registries and Public Service offices and the access to Court rooms. Above the platform, a tall prism emerges, housing all of the necessary Judicial activities, which repeat on each floor. The area principally destined for Installations, Archives and Detentions are located under the slope of the terrain. A restricted access to central circulation here practically divides the floor in two in order to separate the treatment of the archives from the installation and detention areas. The placement of the different installation packages such as ducts and pipes have been the optimized in the plans and vertical registers to accommodate for ventilation needs. The parking lots and detention areas have been designed with independent restricted access providing a direct vertical connection with the respective offices.
With regards to the development around the building’s exterior, two important aspects have been taken into account. On the one hand, research towards the pedestrian access to the building from the city center, with its extremely variable influxes of people, led us to take an interesting look at the reservation of a public space at the entrance. This is favored by the way that the building is set back and by the configuration of ramps that make up for the unevenness of the ground, one of which is slightly terraced, creating a differentiated entrance, recognizable from the exterior.
On the other hand, another important consideration was the reserve of limited size parking lots for building personnel, introducing a new back road surrounded by parking lots, directly connected to the building’s employee entrance, encompassing an access ramp for judicial and police vehicles.
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