The brief called for an office block, built on two sites belonging to different owners. The office block is comprised of two independent three-storey volumes that share a unified open-air courtyard.
Due to the block’s triangular shape, the building volumes were placed around the perimeter of the site, in order to achieve an arrangement aligned to the surrounding streets and to take advantage of the view. The unbuilt interior area of the site was shaped into a common-use enclosed courtyard, towards which the buildings’ entrances and internal circulation cores (staircases, receptions, corridors) are placed. The form of the volumes of the block were determined by the linear development, and the adoption of a 6.70 m column grid, chosen to provide flexibility in the interior partitioning of the open-space floors. In this way the subdivisions can be realised with a minimum width of 3.35 m.
A final, key design consideration was the request for plenty of natural light and uninhibited prospects for most interior spaces, which resulted in large areas of glazing set on the south and east elevations of the volumes. This, in a country of frequent and intense sunshine, required extensive sun shading, which was achieved through the use of permanent vertical or horizontal canopies and vertical screens of corrugated steel or polycarbonate sheets, supported by metal trusses. The west elevations of the block have relatively fewer openings.
