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Dwellings + Offices Towers
Vitoria Gasteiz, Spain. 2006
First Prize. National Competition by CV selection. Area: 24.500m2CLIENT: Ensanche 21/ Jaureguizahar
ARCHITECTS: Juan Herreros, Iñaki Ábalos
PROJECT TEAM: David Sobrino, Juanjo González Castellón, Renata Sentkiewicz, Elena Cuerda, Christian Leibenger
STRUCTURES: Obiol y Moya
Awards
-AVS Euskadi Awards 2009 (Best Housing design)
-FAD Awards 2008: FinalistFour towers are the result of slivering the two massive buildings envisioned in the original masterplan. Framing Salburua’s main axis, these rise over the landscape, poking over the wetlands at their feet. Each tower’s position is slightly tilted from one another’s, generating a cinematic experience and bestowing upon the sinuous park-drive which separates the city from the wetlands with a picturesque idiosyncrasy. Seven of the buildings’ levels (reaching a height from which the hill at the historical centre can be seen) host office spaces, while the rest are devoted to housing (providing dwellings with two or three façades), avoiding the typical private gardens in favour of absorbing the view of the wetlands below, concealing both parking facilities below the public ponds. A single window and a single opaque, enveloping material are the first steps to an extreme protocol of simplification, as a part of an integral bioclimatic plan in which the towers gather energy from the most favourable orientations, granting an optimal solar radiation exposure by means of their proportions.