MALAGA MUNICIPAL URBANISM HEADQUARTER

DESCRIPTION

The growth of the city of Malaga made it necessary to group in a single building the municipal offices in charge of drafting the planning of the municipality, the urban management and the urban infrastructure works in the city of Malaga. The building, inaugurated a little over a decade ago, is located at the beginning of the Antonio Machado promenade, whose renovation after the burying of the railway tracks was the great urban operation of the end of the 20th century. With extraordinary views of the Port of Malaga and the sea of the city, the project developed with a clear geometry proposed, through the uniqueness of its façade, to be an architectural landmark and a sign of modernity in the 21st century urbanism of Malaga.

The program develops office spaces laid out in a ring around the perimeter of the building, while the central areas are kept diaphanous as open-floor-plan where the municipal teams of the different urban departments of the city are located. The ground floor has inside a large arrival hall that crosses the built volume from north to south. The 10-storey building has a public square on the third floor that connects the two prisms of different heights that emerge from it and where outdoor activities and meetings take place. The tallest west wing has on its seventh floor a cantilever maintained on its remaining four floors that projects the building towards the Mediterranean Sea.

This closeness and the importance of the sea in the imagination of the city’s inhabitants and visitors inspired the façade of the project, by means of adjustable glass slats with different degrees of transparency. Its conception as a ventilated facade favors the protection against the sun of the interior envelope. And beyond its usefulness, it was our desire that this wall tile with blue reflections recalls the movement and brightness of the sea of Malaga city.