Due to operational requirements, the building was required to occupy the central area of the complex, on a sloping site overlooking the Nervión valley. However, a conscious effort was made to preserve this central zone, topographically understood as a geometric point of inflection, as free and unbuilt as possible. To this end, the project is resolved through the fragmentation of the program into two low-lying volumes, carefully adapted to the natural gradient. The terrain itself penetrates the building, flowing between both bodies.
The division of the program and the embedding of the volumes within the ground mitigate the presence of built mass at the most significant point of the site, which also constitutes the convergence of visual axes from the surrounding buildings. Ultimately, the intervention aspires to a condition of minimal occupation, an architecture that, metaphorically, refrains from “taking the air.”
The interior spaces, level with or subtly sunken into the ground, recover a vernacular sensibility rooted in Basque architecture, characterized by its tactile and climatic proximity to the humid terrain and its dispersed relationship with the landscape.
One of the volumes, elongated in plan, accommodates the primary workspaces. The second volume contains technical areas, open-plan rooms, lecture halls, and multipurpose spaces. A continuous glazed façade opens onto the slope, establishing a direct visual and spatial relationship with the surrounding landscape. Courtyards and gardened embankments, resulting from the precise excavation and modeling of the terrain, introduce natural light into all work areas. Illumination is further reinforced through extensive horizontal glazing, aligned with the exterior ground level. Circulation routes traversing this volume and connecting it to the adjacent block are uniformly top-lit, conceived as interior streets and plazas.
In this way, a work environment oriented toward the virtual is enveloped by the tangible presence of sunlight, sky, earth, and vegetation.
The roof of the compact volume is conceived as a fifth façade, a horizontal plane that expresses the diversity of interior uses. Part of this surface is configured as a cobbled plaza that serves as the principal access. Entry and security control are housed within a small, transparent pavilion, reached by traversing the roofscape, moving between aluminum skylights, across the stone platform, and alongside horizontal glazed planes.
The tower, which accommodates systems requiring natural ventilation and elevated communication infrastructures, manifests the technical and immaterial character of the program, emerging as a vertical counterpoint within the composition.
