Offices building in Barcelona

Offices building in Barcelona

Octavio Mestre Arquitectos as Architects

It is a rental office building but also a "crystallized geode". From Bruno Taut and his Glass pavilion in Kholn (1914), through the Maison de Verre of Pierre Chareau in Paris, the glass has been a metaphor for modernity... And this building is an investigation into the condition and different uses of glass. Oíza, the Spanish Architect, used to say the way the architects had to make a more transparent society is making more transparent buildings. Also, showing outside the inner conditions is part of our modern society and our visual culture in prevailing image on the merits and soul...The building is not a conventional building (though it can be used, of course, for that it has been projected), because we are not, either, common architects. And to think differently leads to doing things differently, too.


The fact is that, wanting to construct a geode (mineral time is eternal) we have built an excess, a skin of massive glass of 16 cm deep and 1.4 tons/ml generating varying degrees of transparency within the building. Various metal wings cross the facade, as if it were the veins of the building, jumping from level to level, to dematerialize the idea of superposition horizontal working levels, lighted at night using a LED. System. The building also has a LEED Gold Certified Rehabilitation and consumes 45% less energy than other conventional, a clear commitment to sustainability.


The latest research from NASA confirms that the bumblebee cannot fly and, if flying is because he doesn´t knows he cannot. We build what we build for obstinacy, because we did not know that we could not... But, too, because we believe that the architecture is part of culture, by certain ability, empathy to convince our clients who endorse our suggestions... e didn’t know where we were going... Einstein said that if he knew where he was going, he never call research what he was doing.


Akbar, the Mughal emperor, said "unless you believe in the strength of our military look at the beauty of our buildings"... So, who separated and opposed to the functional the aesthetic they are wrong, because beauty is the most important of functions... Above all, if we understand it in its Hegelian dimension making equal truth and beauty... Therefore, I tell you that beauty saves us... It makes life nicer... as the sunny days. The only interesting architecture is the one exciting.

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