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Architects: 7a+i
- Area: 53 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:Milena Villalba
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Lead Architects: Alejandra Català Roig, Stefania Salvo Gutiérrez, Mariola Fortuño Bort
Text description provided by the architects. The creation of the Office for Non-Discrimination and Hate Crimes in Valencia, ONDIS, is one of the structural actions of the Municipal Coexistence Plan against Discrimination and Hate (COMVA Plan). The City Council wanted to have a space for the care and support of people susceptible to any type of discrimination, and that also served as an information and awareness point for the citizens. Simultaneously, intimate and exposed.
The chosen ground floor location goes from the emblematic Alta Street to Corredores Street, which is more discreet, actually a small square. Although it is narrow and deep, it has a generous height. It included a mezzanine, which occupies part of the premises, and a storage room. The premises were used as a construction site office during the construction of the municipal housing building where it is located. Later, it was used as a warehouse for the Local Police, whose police station is a few meters away. It was never furnished.
We understood, and we proposed it to the City Council, that being the first Office to accommodate this new service, the design and construction should transmit the capacity for transformation, necessary to respond to the redefinition of municipal policies, strategies, and actions. The space itself must be able to be updated according to successive learnings.
We carried out initial demolition and preparation work on the envelope. Based on this, we defined a constructive framework that allowed us to solve the different issues at play (location and context, regulations and program, needs and desires) and that motivated forms that fold and organize the space. Continuous and fluid. And that becomes transparent thanks to the treatment of the two facades.
The project became an assembly workshop, where the proposed solution was refined. A substructure to which panels are attached to solve floors, walls, and ceiling. A dry construction was carried out using materials that are respectful in their production and in their capacity for reuse or recycling. In this way, they can be moved for use in another larger premises or transformed when the service ceases. We played with modifying reality using recognizable materials and elements transferred from their usual context.
