Caja Granada Headquarters Granada cades function as a “brise-soleil,” finely shading

the potent light, and providing illumination

Left: Internal image
of mezzanine level
Below: Internal
Ronan O Dea - 0741957 2001 images of interior
to the areas of open offices. The two northern courtyard.
facades, giving onto the individual offices, re-
ceive the homogeneous and continuous light
characteristic of this orientation, and are en-
closed by stone and glass in horizontal bands.

The central interior courtyard, a

In the undefined outskirts of Granada, the true “impluvium of light,” gath-
central offices of the Caja Granada, the most ers the solid southern light from
significant bank of the city, are to be built. the skylights and, reflected by the
alabaster parameters, augments
A great semi-cubical volume is proposed which the illumination of the open offices.
serves as a reference to tense this new part of Functionally the building has a great
the city. In order to resolve the slope of the site capacity, flexibility, and simplicity.
and the ground floor level, a great base is cre-
ated between the two highways that border the
Above: View from Car Park Simply, it is a stereotomic, con-
Above Left: Aerial Photographs (City Scale and Street Scale)
site upon which the cubic piece sits. In this po- taining, stone and concrete box,
dium, parking and future additions are resolved. that traps sunlight in its interior
The emerging, stereotomic, cubic box, is built of a to serve a tectonic, contained,
reinforced concrete grid 3 x 3 x 3 meters, which box enclosed in an efficient “im-
serves as a mechanism to collect light, the central pluvium of light.” A diagonal
theme of this architecture. The two southern fa- space crossed by a diagonal light.