TRANSFORMATIONS

Brendan McCambridge

Year 3

2022/2023

Patrik Schumacher, Constructing Architecture, Materials, Processes, Structure, a Handbook, Deplazes, Andrea, Basel: Birkhäuser, 2008

Placa Europa 31, designed by the winners of the 2017 Pritzker Architecture prize, RCR Architects, is a 7 story structurally framed office building, with two sub ground levels located in Hospitalet De Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain. The aim of the practice was to make the most of the location, through the projects powerful capacity to emanate a centrifugal force, blurring the lines to have a positive impact on its surroundings.

Originally the building was designed as the headquarters for a real estate company, however while under construction, the project was transformed into a clustered office building. The planning ordinances for Plaça Europa precisely defined the buildings, obliging their arrangement in a concentric curve on the square with a regulated three-part stepped setback in height. The air articulates and the structure shapes the interior of this predefined envelope. A series of steel ribs, which form the outer bearer structure, have a fan-like arrangement, adjusted one by one to describe the arc. Depending on one’s angle of vision, these ribs project a tense, opaque image, or an open, transparent image. From inside, the structural ribs capture a framed view of the exterior.

The articulating air shapes the entrance square and the longitudinal porch, creeping inside the common zones and crossing the complex vertically, generating a courtyard. The inward facing glazing reinforces the air and the depth, facilitating the installation of external curtains. Two parking storeys complete the services for the office levels, which permit cellular or landscape floors, depending on their width.

The physical usable connection between Overworld and Underworld generates an interweaving of spaces, either with the aim of bringing the surroundings bellow ground, or taking the subterrane use upwards into the streetscape” - onstructing Architecture, Materials, Processes, Structure, a Handbook, Deplazes, Andrea, Basel: Birkhäuser, 2008

“Architecture obtains its memoria, its spatial power and character from its material”onstructing Architecture, Materials, Processes, Structure, a Handbook, Deplazes, Andrea, Basel: Birkhäuser, 2008

The conditions of the location are allowed to enter, creating a dialouge with the place, rendering it, stregthing the positive and correcting any existing shortcomings.

RCR design their buildings to be anti-iconic, discreet, even hidden: they are not defined through their boundaries.