Friday, August 21, 2009

MN19 Office by b720 Arquitectos

MN19 Office

The new facade is a colourful transparent glass slats float horizontally, changing from yellow to orange.
MN19 Office
Design Team: b720 Arquitectos
Location: Barcelona
When to visit: Anytime

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 facade had to allow its identification as a contemporary corporative building. b720 decided to use colour as an integration tool in a consolidated environment of upper class apartment buildings On the facade 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.

MN19 Office
MN19 Office

In the inner facade, b720 take advantage of the existing siding wall. They 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 facade surface and painted in several colours with a progression similar to the one of the main facade, By removing a projecting body of the interior facade, 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 ramp 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. b720 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.

MN19 Office

via b720 Arquitectos

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