ARCHELLO YOUR CONNECTION WITH ARCHITECTURE

The project created for the Attorney General Building at the Campus of Justice in Madrid was based on the concept of justice, defined in a first sense as the moral principle that gives each one what dutifully belongs to them, but also as the concept of rights, reason and equity. The term naturally led to the idea of observance, as the act or practice of observing or complying with a law, custom, command or rule. However, observance also remits to the sense of sight, of watching, such as the organ that watches attentively, analyzing its environment. These were the concepts that participated in creating the generating concept.

In order to turn such concept into a reality, the sense of sight was analyzed, both from the point of view of its functional features as well as from its formal elements, later becoming our creative project.

The system’s outermost layer, the eyelids, is there to protect and moisten the eye. These skin folds create a structural membrane that has two natures, one concerning its immediate role of protecting the rest of the organ from the sunshine and light and, secondly, as its natural support structure. This was represented in the proposal by means of a geometric pattern, resulting from the analysis of function and proportion of a clear architectural program.

Then came the turn for the cornea, which in the eye is the transparent layer that allows the sunlight into the system, which translated in the building as a holistic bioclimatic system, consisting of double flexible low-e glass, which acts as a sustainable leveling element.

The retina was the third element taken into account. This is a highly complex system, consisting mainly of nerve cells, which receive and are sensitive to light. This was represented as the interior space itself, which generates the experience of accomplishing a task amid a sensitive environment where, depending on the programmatic approach to coloring, sends the information it retrieves from external stimuli into the collective brain, thus creating an integrated and inter-related space.

The surrounding muscles and tissue that become the eye’s cilia are the building’s various structural elements, the primary muscles in the architectural system.

The iris, understood as the structure suspended between the cornea and the crystalline lens, with its round central opening is materialized in the project as a dome, right in the building’s center, transmitting the coloring that bathes and filters the architectural system in processed light.

The crystalline lens has the shape of a capsule, made of an infinite number of layered transparent fibers that actually constitute a third skin, made out of fibers, which contains and identifies the nucleus from where the building breathes and naturally controls its thermo-acoustic and relative humidity levels, offering, in addition, a second lighting stage, thus turning the organ into a sustainable and intelligent being.

In addition to these elements, the building has two basements, functioning as parking lot, vehicle entrance facility and vertical communication nuclei, taking people to their workspaces.

The ground level contains the main pedestrian access to the building, as well as the plaza, that becomes part and participant of the whole environment by means of a vacuum (the crystalline lens), bathing every level in natural light and opening its space to the trees that spear from the first basement, making this space a microclimate in itself.

The upper seven levels are articulated by the three vertical communication nuclei, strategically located in order to avoid long horizontal walks. The continuous central ramp, that travels from one level to another, ends at the upper terrace, accessible through the coronation dome (the iris), that lets natural light in and gives way to the terrace, designed to hold green areas that also provide a sight of the Campus.

The building’s external skin is made of layers that may be seen from the façade, acting as structural support and solar control. This generates and external element that frames the landscape, protects the inner spaces from the sunlight, supports the building and rounds up this sustainable project with a conceptual presence, identity and force of its own.