Roca Agro Offices / Sergio Alberto Cabrera Arquitectos

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Text description provided by the architects. The project is located on the side of the most important highway to the city. It is in a characteristic mountainous sector of this area. The site is 100m x 22m, with access from both ends and with the peculiarity of being divided in two by a canal, hence one half of the site is flat, and the other has significant topographic features.

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To maximize the site at the lowest possible cost, both economic and environmental, and trying to integrate the building into the landscape, we took the decision of reconstituting it with the architecture. Thus we avoid the appearance of large retaining walls.

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The client proposed a heterogeneous program of needs. It is functionally divided into two parts. In the area of the ravine, overlooking the main street, we design the administrative and commercial offices, the meeting room with services on the first floor, all of them elevated over the site, leaving room for the building services. On the flat area, we design the house keeper's dwelling, a gallery, product reception offices, and a storage area with differentiated access for trucks. A pedestrian axis links the two sectors through a metal bridge 22 m long and 3 m wide.

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The materials were adapted to the requirements of the program, environment and construction phases. Exposed concrete was used to detach from the ground in one case and to contain it in another. We used metal structure for the bridge and the warehouse, and the Steel Frame system to lighten the weight due to seismic issues and construction phases.

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There were no problems with the enforcement of planning and building regulations. Sewer and water services were non-existent so a sewage treatment plant was installed and a water well was drilled.

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The "limes" is the intermediate space between the center and periphery, a place of contrasts, links, mediation and harmony. The project raises these spaces of mediation and relationship at different scales and sequences, achieving a grouping of elements (offices - house - warehouse) with its own order and meaning, as the many buildings surrounding the landscapes of valleys and ravines.

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The project met its requirements and also transgressed the limits of its territory, involving new buildings of the environment that incorporated its materiality.