The design by Israel Alba Estudio for the headquarters of the Red Cross in Fuenlabrada consists of facilities that are easily adaptable to users, designed to evolve and facilitate their programs to generate emotional and affective support for the most needy groups. A spatial organisation that aims to be integrative and facilitate attention, encouraging exchange, knowledge and collaboration in a succession of open spaces connected and open to their surroundings.
The building was built using load-bearing walls finished with exposed brick, without joints, and an exposed concrete roof that resolves both structure and roof, creating a sequence of open parallel rooms that extend the exterior public space generating transition spaces with the interior of the building that is finished with wooden carpentry. A set organised on a single level that guarantees easy universal accessibility.
Red Cross Headquarters by Israel Alba Estudio. Photograph by Jesús Granada.
Project description by Israel Alba Estudio
How should architecture respond to the aspirations of an institution?
Those of the Spanish Red Cross can be summed up as follows: EVER CLOSER TO THE PEOPLE.
This project responds to the institutional manifesto with solidity, transparency, efficiency and openness. To do so, the architecture is resolved with decisions based on matter and geometry, adaptability and innovation. A cohesive architecture without hierarchies.
The site, a right-angled triangle, is the end of a residential area between the King Juan Carlos University and the M-506 highway, in front of which there is a school and a high school. Its slope is gentle and continuous along its entire length and enjoys good sunlight. The building is shifted towards the widest part of the triangle, freeing up the sharp end. This geometry contains enough attributes to become the main argument of the project.
The west façade is the natural area of access from the city, closed off to avoid the problems of this orientation, especially in summer. A hallway extends the street into the building. Once inside, the space multiplies and expands in a sequence of transparent rooms open to the garden that surrounds the headquarters on three sides, perceived from end to end, with nothing to hide.
Considering the gradient of the perimeter streets, the headquarters is located at an intermediate level to minimise the necessary earthworks and enhance the relationship between the interior and the exterior. To reach the load-bearing stratum, a technical gallery through which the installations run, including the air conditioning and ventilation systems, occupies the entire footprint of the building, which will provide great versatility in the future.
The work addresses construction in a direct way. Structurally, it is based on a brick and lintel load-bearing wall system, introducing the idea of compression through the roof slab. This system, which resolves structure and space simultaneously, is conceived as a sequence of parallel open halls delimited by two-foot-thick walls 6.60m apart and with a free height of 3.50m, in consonance with the construction tradition of Madrid architecture. For this purpose, a red-coloured pressed brick bone-on-frame is used, always in whole pieces, as a starting point for the modularity and systematisation of the building. The insulation is solved with 10cm of organic wood fibre panels inside the double ceramic sheet of the walls, a continuous thermal envelope around the entire perimeter, including the roof slab, its edge and the joinery, made of wood. Doors and windows are 2.10m high.
The halls, which are not very specialised but highly qualified spaces, are connected through a distribution gallery as a covered prolongation of the street, an extension of the public space inside the building, punctuated by a sequence of 6 skylights regulated by means of automated opening to reinforce natural cross ventilation, improving the temperature and environmental comfort. 88 photovoltaic panels are installed next to the skylights to generate 48,400kWp for self-consumption, making the roof a real energy collector. The recesses in the external joinery allow solar radiation to be controlled, protecting from excessive heat in summer and letting light in during the winter, contributing to the natural heating of the rooms. The organisation of the public and private programme around this gallery ensures universal accessibility, which is developed on a single level.
In fact, it is an adaptable infrastructure where users can decide how best to use it, allowing it to evolve along with the space they inhabit, which prolongs the useful life of the project and its social and ecological relevance. The building aspires to become an emotional and affective support for the most vulnerable groups, allowing a comprehensive approach to the different dimensions of the phenomenon of social exclusion, one of the missions carried out by the Red Cross. It is a building for exchange, knowledge and integration, which will collaborate in the work of social responsibility developed by the institution.
