- Area: 7337 m²
- Year: 2011
-
Photographs:Miguel de Guzmán
Text description provided by the architects. The new office for the external services of the healthcare and social affairs in Toledo, located in the residential state of Santa Maria de Benquerencia, relies upon its simplicity and volumetric efficiency design. The building combines three different uses, typologies institutional offices, teaching and classrooms area with an auditorium and finally a kindergarten. The exterior image of the project is defined as a solution of visual filters for the façade obtained using stretched metallic sheets, deployé type, white lacquered and folded, together with a strong presence of cantilevered concrete slabs acting as efficient solar protection. During the day The Deployé sheets solidify while filtering West and South light. At evening and night, due to the inversion of lighting order, the picture transforms into an interesting moiré effect.
The building is configured into an U-Shape, enclosing an inner patio and a garden that connects visually and functionally all the complex. The perimeter works with a system of hidden patios allowing quality and good natural lighting of the half-buried spaces, as well as a barrier against intrusion and vandalism. Two main aspects affect all the general organization of the building: the different uses and their correspondent independent accesses, as well as maximum demand on universal accessibility in all the building. An exterior circulation leading to the patio, with slopes lower than 6%, allows linking effectively the highest and lowest parts of the perimeter streets with a perfectly adapted path to the disabled people exigencies, turning into an architectural promenade.
From the constructive point of view the building has been modulated very exhaustively everywhere but in the turns of the main volumes, adding all service elements and vertical cores. Each system, exterior framings, divisions, pavements, ceilings, etc, have been designed with the most care in order and solutions but without losing capability of alterations and flexibility.
