CAMPO BAEZA

In the undefined outskirts of Granada, the central offices of the Caja General, the most significant bank of the city, has been built.

A great semi-cubical volume serves as a reference to tense this new part of the city. In order to resolve the slope of the site and the ground floor level, a great base is created between the two highways that border the site upon which the cubic piece sits. In this podium, parking and future additions are resolved. The emerging, stereotomic, cubic box, is built of a reinforced concrete grid 3 x 3 x 3 meters, which serves as a mechanism to collect light, the central theme of this architecture. The two southern facades function as a "brise-soleil," finely shading the potent light, and providing illumination to the areas of open offices. The two northern facades, giving onto the individual offices, receive the homogeneous and continuous light characteristic of this orientation, and are enclosed by stone and glass in horizontal bands.

The central interior courtyard, a true "impluvium of light," gathers the solid southern light from the skylights and, reflected by the alabaster parameters, augments the illumination of the open offices. Functionally the building has a great capacity, flexibility, and simplicity.

Simply, it is a stereotomic, containing, stone and concrete box, that traps sunlight in its interior to serve a tectonic, contained, box enclosed in an efficient "impluvium of light." A diagonal space crossed by a diagonal light.

source: Campo Baeza