Mestre Nicolau 19

Project Name: Mestre Nicolau 19
Construction year: 2002
Website:
Address: Carrer del Mestre Nicolau 19 , BARCELONA - Spain

Architect(s) : B720 Arquitectos (www.b720.com)
Project Category: Office

Latitude: 41.3941
Longitude: 2.14302

Mestre Nicolau 19

The project consists of transforming an administrative building between party walls, which had significant structural problems, into an office building. The work presents two basic concepts: on one side, the training of obtaining, from a very determining pre-existence, the flexibility and services level that this typology demands. On the other side, a new faade had to allow its identification as a contemporary corporative building. We decided to use colour as an integration tool in a consolidated environment of upper class apartment buildings On the faade of Mestre Nicolau, coloured transparent glass slats draw a surface floating without specific limits face to the siding.

The whole sets out gradually in two aspects: horizontally, the colour, changing from yellow to orange, borrowing the shades of the awnings of the close bourgeois balconies and terraces, and, vertically, the density of the slats, which, depending on the sun rays and on the narrowness of the street, make the protection more necessary in the upper floors than in the lower floors. In the inner faade, we take advantage of the existing siding wall. We designed a simple white facing with oblong holes, regularly arranged. Every hole is encircled with a thick sheet plate as a perimeter entrance portal projecting from the faade surface and painted in several colours with a progression similar to the one of the main faade. By removing a projecting body of the interior faade, it was possible to place the new access core in the central space, which was an air shaft by the party wall on the right. This allowed the distribution of the floors in two main office areas, facing, respectively, the exterior - Mestre Nicolau St.- and the inside -air shaft- and also a central area thought as an open office. The ground floor is at the street level and comprises the accesses to the offices, the rarnp for the parking access and a commercial premise taking the rest of available space.

The structure was reinforced with carbon fibre and endured certain changes in the position of the columns existing in the basement and ground floors to be able to fit the current distribution to the new conditions of use We used colour combined with very highlighted graphics as a very effective resource to supply unity and style.

The hall and stairs are covered with black terrazzo applied continually on flooring and vertical facings, which sometimes tilt and form light grooves or transform in the concierge desk.
(text from architects' website)

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