The new Basque Health Department headquarters is
located at the last site that still remained unbuilt on the
administrative and Business Center of Bilbao. Up to now,
the institution was suffering the spread of its staff in several
buildings, hardly recognizable by citizens, away from each
other and uncomfortable for both users and technical
services. The project at the same time involves both economic and property profits.

The aim of the new building is bringing together
staff in a recognizable place, in order to increase the
efficiency of the service and identify easily the corporation.

The site is located in the crossroad of two important streets
of the Ensanche, designed in 1862. The restrictive city rules
compel to repeat the shape of the neighboring walls,
reducing penthouses according to a curved directive,
chamfering the corner and building a tower on it.

The folded façade generates multiple visual directions from
inside to the streets bellow, and also from the highest floors
to the landscape that surrounds the city, a highly effective
mechanism for the incorporation of urban vitality inside the
building.

The double façade solves not only all the mentioned urban
requirements but also those concerning energetic, fireresistant
and acoustic insulation. This climatic improvement
enables the elimination of the conventional air-conditioning
installation as well as the false ceiling. Thus, the sound
produced by the building is reduced, air recirculation in
workplaces disappears, with a significant increase of health
conditions, and the volume occupied per floor is also
reduced, saving resources consumed by the construction.

The façade responds to the investigation launched in the
previous projects, which considers the wrapper as a
system. The construction techniques, the operation of the
building, the energy exchange, the city and also the very
fact, the desire to be… take part in the system definition, but
never the elevation or the composition. The system must
provide a valid response to the different situations
generated in the façade. Instead of merely set the building
on the one hand and shaping the urban space on the other,
the façade system should become a social vehicle.

The building concentrates services and communications in
a vertical spine attached to the longest party hedge and
generates seven open floors assigned for offices. Above
this, there are two floors for local representative and
institutional use. The workspace benefits of the permeable,
passable and livable volume of the building. The board hall
takes up the double height of the tower. The auditorium, its
foyer and its appendages are situated in the first basement.
Further below there are two parking floors and one fourth
level for archives. The car lifts allow access to all the
basement levels.

The project emphasizes the place to sit on the threshold, at
the doorway of a house, looking down the road and the
back into the home.