Type: Security
-
Textured Tower
We thought that we could take the cultural problem of identity and personalization and translate that idea into our work, into the process itself and the people who are working on the building. We wanted to think about the intellectual concern of personalization, just in technical or constructive terms.
Construction is literally making the building. Then at that point we can translate it and think about personalization as a kind of constructive issue.
The tower is made with exposed reinforced concrete, one of the few materials able to resist a heavy daily training with real fire. The formwork has been made and assembled with industrialized procedures, a really complicated technology. But the external molds, the external layer of the formwork —that is, the internal layer, the one in contact with the concrete, facing it— were handmade. So the thin layer which is going to be the actual mold, the current form, of the concrete and the building, was handmade.
We asked all the people who worked on the building to build their own particular, favorite formworks. We gave the workers some instructions, a few simple recommendations about the number of wedges and the distance between them. From there, each person could organize the panel molding at her or his discretion or particular taste for the entire building. So each point of the surface was responding to a manual activity, and at the end, it seems like the envelope was alive —because it really is alive.
Reference to Alberto Giacometti’s slender figures, whose vertical tension and material presence informed the conception of the Textured Tower.
The tower is compressed in order to get more structural inertia, make a more efficient structure, save material and, therefore, energy. The tower is compressed and textured also to become more essential and not fill the air, as Giacometti’s “thin figures”.
We fold out the elevation not only because it is the only way to communicate the real drawing, but because you can cut it and fold it and make your own textured tower at home.
Multiple mobile filters separate the outside of the interior through deep apertures. Inside, the tower is extremely tough and spartan, built with concrete and galvanized or lacquered steel. The textured tower is filled with the drawing marks, so from inside we can know —as it happened before the Renaissance— the technical dialogue of the builders.
Again, design lives during the work process. We can still see the paper. We can still see the marksof the making process, not only the marks of the construction, but also the marks of the drawing: numbers, notes, including digital icons… the paper and the screens of the designers are still here, the process is still here, consequently we are still in the place for designing, for freedom and possibilities. Paper, texture and concrete show that designers, builders and users are part of the same community.
-
Satellite Air Traffic Center
In 2000, an international ideas competition was launched to design the first facility capable of controlling the new constellation of 30 Galileo satellites, the European system conceived to ensure the continent’s strategic autonomy from the United States GPS network.
This initiative represented a technological challenge not only for Spain but for the European Union as a whole, demanding a level of performance and technical complexity unprecedented within its field.
Spain would thus become the first of four countries to host this new generation of satellite-based air traffic control infrastructure. Located on the outskirts of Madrid, the project integrates this emerging guidance system with existing centralized control operations and a range of international platforms associated with advanced air traffic technologies.
The site is highly singular. Set within the Jarama river basin, it embodies both the measured horizontality of the Castilian plateau and the latent dynamism of its open, expansive condition. The proximity of military runways reinforces the perception of an uninterrupted, stratified landscape, where ground and sky establish a continuous visual and operational field.
The building is conceived as an interface with this vast territorial horizon. Its northern façade unfolds as a continuous glazed plane, extending beyond its limits to frame distant views across the plain, while foregrounding the powerful presence of aircraft in motion along the adjacent runways.
Simultaneously, the project establishes a precise relationship with the sky. A longitudinal skylight, running parallel to the glazed façade, introduces calibrated natural light into the interior while enabling visual continuity with the celestial sphere. This device operates both atmospherically and symbolically, evoking the trajectories of flight and the orbital logic of satellites.
The roofscape emerges as a topographical construct. It extends and reinterprets the existing embankments and paths of the site, transforming the building into an artificial ground that preserves and amplifies the memory of the terrain. In this way, the project does not simply occupy the landscape but becomes a continuation of it, a constructed plateau. In this gesture resonates the metaphor proposed by Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, who described Madrid as a condition suspended upon an elevated plane.
Two decades later, the building has not only fulfilled its initial ambitions but has intensified its relevance. It now accommodates the European satellite-based air navigation system, centralized air traffic control platforms, and a range of European and international space-related infrastructures. It continues to develop Galileo-related programs, anticipates the expansion of its activities through emerging technologies, and plays a strategic role within the current critical geopolitical context of the European Union. It stands at the forefront of airspace management, contributing decisively to the security and operational autonomy of the Union.
The building has proven its civic and institutional value, a realized vision that remains open to further evolution. On the occasion of its twentieth anniversary, a return visit reveals a facility fully in operation, yet still oriented toward the future. Its directors reflect with quiet determination, their gaze still fixed on the satellites: more remains to be done.
-
Policepeople House
From the site Bilbao’s dense urban length is visible, squeezed on the narrow and deep banks of the river Nervión. Also visible is the green landscape, with water and vertical slopes that confine the city and compress it against the estuary.
Biscayan’s rainy atmosphere seems to lie dormant on the site. The land, the nearby hills, the city in front and below, the mountains from the opposite bank and even the moist air come together in an almost complete continuity, as if they were the same subject.
The soil itself is unstable. It is uncertain. It is the result of having quickly filled an open mine, with pits up to 50 m deep, which formed a cavernous place in its physical reality and its memory.
Upstream, other mine sites have been transformed, also visible from the site, which confirm the history of this exchange between matter and soil, the life of the city and that of men, the densification of the territory and the air.
Above this vacillating place, buildings do not have any mass. Folded aluminum sheets acquire enough inertia to be supported in the air.
To the North, Public Safety’s concatenated planes are perceived from distant areas and set up a close relationship with the steep topography of the slope.
To the South, the Civil Protection areas are emptied towards the valley. Like the old fire stations, they take the public presence of the building to a new and large urban area.
In these buildings, there is still a reference to some industrial constructions, those building-machines or process decanters that have transformed the history of the city and set off the lives of its people. Probably, both programs could be interchangeable through their high umbilical cord.
-
Firefighters House
The building is the result of an international ideas competition and houses the central Fire Department of Bilbao, serving a European urban area of over one million people. Like traditional European fire stations, it establishes its civic presence through a large urban square, opening itself to the city.
The project emerges from the character of its environment. The rainy atmosphere seems to settle over the site, where the ground, the surrounding hills, the city below, the distant mountains across the river, and even the humid air merge into an almost continuous whole. Glass and crumpled aluminum extend this condition, becoming a material expression of that atmosphere while also recalling the industrial heritage of Bilbao and the Basque Country—those 19th-century building-machines and processing structures that transformed the region and shaped its identity.
Conceived as an efficient operational system, the building supports the work of first responders through a precise overlap of functions—rest, preparation, and action. A capillary network of fire poles and vertical connections ensures immediate response and continuous readiness.
Inside, the Firemen’s House opens toward the valley. From within, the dense urban fabric appears compressed along the narrow riverbanks, while the surrounding green landscape, with its steep and rain-soaked slopes, encloses the city and presses it toward the estuary.
The building deliberately avoids conventional finishing details. Rather than applying a superficial decorative layer, it preserves the construction process itself. The physical labor of those who built it remains present and tangible. Although fully operational, the building still carries the imprint of that manual effort—an essential part of its character.
