The building recovers a passage that gives access to a garden area, it becomes the urban heart of the proposal and allows access to both the interior building of the plot and the spaces facing the street. At different heights, gardens are repeated on the terraces and roofs that kindly integrate the new intervention.
KNEM Offices by b720 Fermín Vázquez Arquitectos. Photograph by Adrià Goula.
The program is organized with large office spaces in the buildings facing the street and a central block with a series of duplex-type offices opening onto the central passage. The complex is formally unified with a large masonry plinth between one and two heights that runs along the entire perimeter.
The project uses post-tensioned slabs in the blocks facing the streets that allow the elimination of the central pillars and provide a free and flexible plan. The building has obtained the Leed Gold environmental and Fitwell comfort seal.
KNEM Offices by b720 Fermín Vázquez Arquitectos. Photograph by Adrià Goula.
Project description by b720 Fermín Vázquez Arquitectos
The project is located in the Poble Nou district on a plot that formed a part of the old jute spinning factory of the Godó brothers, popularly known as “El Cànem”, and which occupied up to three entire blocks of the Ensanche. The existing façade overlooking Doctor Trueta street is being preserved as it is included in the Architectural Heritage Protection Plan.
The program is distributed over three volumes within the plot: two blocks with the facades to each of the streets and a block in the central area that joins them through a large landscaped passage. Despite this organisation in three differentiated buildings, it seems appropriate to create a formal unity that brings together tradition and innovation while at the same time highlighting the industrial past of Poble Nou and the legacy of the “El Cànem” factory. In this way, a continuous masonry plinth runs along the perimeter of the entire building unifying the three volumes into a single programmatic and consistent entity. On this base rest, two glass boxes are screened with an aluminium lattice that evokes the interweaving of the jute fabric fibres. This duality between pre-existing architecture's industrial past and the new building's contemporary vocation reveals itself in contrast between the base and the raised boxes.
The blocks facing the street offer large spaces of open and flexible offices thanks to the strategic location of the vertical cores and the post-tensioned concrete structure; The central volume is conceived as an addition to the offices, being a smaller duplex type, open to the central passage resembling old industrial workshops that dotted the urban fabric of Poble Nou.
