Details_

• CLIENT: Ayuntamiento de Las Torres de Cotillas, Murcia (Spa)
• PROJECT: Riccardo Crespi Architetto (AdHocMsl)
  
• AREA: 10.000 sqm
• BUDGET: 8.500.000€
• PHASES: Preliminary and final design, tender drawings | Site supervision | Completed
• Photografer: © David Frutos

Project description_

With the intent to meet the new needs related to the rapid population growth occurred in the City of Las Torres de Cotillas, in 2004, the City has organized an international competition for the new City Hall. The building should have replaced the existing one, almost obsolete and unable to accommodate the new functional requirements of the City, and it would group all departments that they were dispersed across remote sites.

Our design intention, clear since the initial phase,  was to create a building that was not monumental even if placed around a big square, as commonly it occurs for a City Hall building. Not a monument but a symbol of participation and transparency of the Municipality towards the citizen.

Inspired by the above aim, we divided in two areas the city hall’s functions: all the department and offices strictly considered “private” were organized into a glazed building set at the level 0.00  . Therefore, public functions as main entrance,  lobby, civil registry , the council chamber, town planning technical office, were set at a lower level -4.00, directly connected with the main square located at the same level.

Our decision to move the square in a lower level was due to the desire to create a public space that was protected from the traffic flows, and at the same time, our aim was to recreate the typical town square on which functions as cafe’ restaurant retails moreover the municipality were usually placed. A square with the values of the past: a place to stay, to live every day, a place where they could also take place events and shows.

A real public square that was not representative of the government, instead of the relation between citizen. Around the public square an artificial landscape and topography composed by ramps and slope is generated.

Under the aforementioned artificial path, functions related to the administration department are displaced. The glazed facade system is characterized by a serigraphy with  semi opaque “bubble” shaped.  supported by a parametric software we define size ,shape and density of each “bubble” in order to obtain the best performance of the facade, based on objective and measurable data