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Architects: Otxotorena
- Area: 11062 m²
- Year: 2012
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Photographs:Jose Manuel Cutillas
Text description provided by the architects. The idea of the report seeks to remit us to the world of reflections which raise when remodeling the historical-architectural patrimony, which had to be faced during the rehabilitation and adaptation project of the building of the old Audience of Pamplona to become the new headquarters of the Parliament of Navarra. The idea won the open competition summoned to this effect.
The basis was the premise of the necessity to conserve the encircling exterior of the building, and the proposal is based on the zeal of going beyond a mere re-utilization of the facade, trying to make understand that the whole operation was aimed at a change of use of the building bound to its deep transformation. And such an operation consisted in the complete clearing of the interior, maintaining its external appearance in all its perimeter, and closing the space that has been opened up by means of a glass skin that makes its pleura, as much in horizontal as in vertical way.
This design satisfies the resolution of the program of necessities, persuing the best adaptation possible of the ideal program issued and edited in its day by the Parliament to the derived conditions of the configuration and the state of the building object to the intervention. The organization of its new functions implies the preservation of the central spaces for the most representative uses, summoning the workspaces to its perimetral area, which is conserved of the current outline.
This fitting seeks, as far as possible, a double ordination in horizontal and in vertical: the horizontal ordination would make reference to the differenciation among the spaces dedicated to an administrative use and those more specifically political ones; the vertical ordination dedicates the current basement to the more institutional uses (Meeting-room of Sessions, Institutional Hall, Atrium) and to storage space and service area (cafeteria, deposit of books, general document files, wardrobe/changing rooms, different storage places, etc.). The first floor is conceived as “noble floor” holding the spaces dedicated to Presidency, Juridical Services, Mayor Lawyer and Intervention. A new basement is built in the clearing of the patio, being, at the moment, available for other future uses.
The executive project tries to show that fitting the new uses in the pre-existing spaces expresses the decisions regarding the constructive design, making evident the most significant providences. These decisions thus follow a sequence similar to the one followed in the description of the project; and the election of materials as well as of technical solutions depends on their capacity to explain and even to underline the logical reasoning that underlie the design.
In the new construction, the face that gives to the patio of the interior wall, which is mantained, becomes a great visible facade thanks to the “curtain wall”. From the point of view of the constructive design of the building, the most significant element is, without doubt, the structural unit composed of the “glass” made of glass. It is suspended on a series of metallic hangers that lean on the upper part of the two perimetric walls that compose the exterior of the building: we are talking about beams(110 x10 cm), carried out in carbon steel. From these beams, hangers made of stainless steal (HEB 160) are suspended, and from these other beams of similar dimensions to the superior ones are hanging, also made of stainless steel, but perforated to allow the light to shine through and to create a certain transparency.
The hangers, in turn, are fixed to the walls on the different floors by means of straps of the same dimension, thus reducing their length of pandation. On this structural element rests, on one hand, a “glass” made of glass, solved by means of a mixed curtain wall of aluminum and stainless steel; and, on the other hand, it sustains some light passages that form the corridors that give access to the different rooms on the exterior side.
The covering of these perimetral corridors is solved by another external corridor that serves as access to the technical rooms of the covered first floor. The machinery which supports the gondola used for the cleaning of the interior facades passes through this corridor. The curtain-wall of the facades rises for more than a meter and serves as handrail of this corridor.
Because of this structural resource, and thanks to the transparency of the curtain-wall, (which opens the view of the section of the building) the union of the new and the old -which constitutes the basis of this project- becomes evident. The use of glass of recent generation in this curtain wall, glass of great transparency and, at the same time, of high capacity of sunlight filtering, proved to be the appropriate solution to the formal image aimed at.
The structural solution, avoiding the supports inside the patio and managing to suspend the great “glass” on the gaps and supports formed by the Atrium and the Meeting-room, seems forced, but it is justified as it solves tectonically the initial idea of the project.
