Stone and light: within a hermetic stone clad casket is an interior realm of lightness and tranquillity.Alberto Campo Baeza's new offices for the local health authority in Almeria extend an existing courtyard block on a city centre site. Towering somewhat aloofly over seven storeys above its squat neighbour, Campo Baeza's building mediates between the existing low-rise block and surrounding apartments. The exaggerated yet refined geometry of tallness and thinness exploits the narrowest of sites (barely 10m wide). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Clad in honey coloured lumaquela stone, the long thin block appears as an impermeable impermeable /im·per·me·a·ble/ (-per´me-ah-b'l) not permitting passage, as of fluid. im·per·me·a·ble adj. Impossible to permeate; not permitting passage. casket, punctured only by ingenious pivoting stone shutters that create deep recesses in the facade, like watchful eyes. The hermetic hermetic /her·met·ic/ (her-met´ik) impervious to air. her·met·ic or her·met·i·cal adj. Completely sealed, especially against the escape or entry of air. exterior and play of shadows are in the tradition of Iberian architecture (especially in the hot south of Andalucia), though the notion of mass is slightly deceptive--the stone is actually thin sheets fixed to a brick and concrete sub-frame. Inside, the Iberian tradition of the cool, luminous interior also comes into play. The new block is separated from its neighbour by a narrow alleyway, but is also connected to it by a double-height glass box, part foyer, part patio. With a glass roof supported on glass beams, the transparent enclosure forms an ethereal counterpoint to the heaviness of the stone. It also brings a delicate luminance The amount of brightness, measured in lumens, that is given off by a pixel or area on a screen. For example, dark red and bright red would have the same chrominance, but a different luminance. into the narrow spaces, flooding the double-height hall with daylight. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The theme of dematerialisation Dematerialisation may refer to:
spiral staircase n → escalier m en colimaçon spiral staircase spiral n . Given the tightness of the site, planning is necessarily economical. Cellular offices are single banked off a spinal corridor, with a sliver sliver in wool processing a continuous band of carded and combed wool which has not yet been twisted into yarn. of circulation and services extending down the north-east edge of the block. Offices face south and west, so the deep recesses and stone shutters offer much needed protection against heat and glare; on this facade the external wall is around 1m thick to accommodate the shutters. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As ever, this latest building extends Campo Baeza's preoccupation with an exacting minimalism minimalism, schools of contemporary art and music, with their origins in the 1960s, that have emphasized simplicity and objectivity. Minimalism in the Visual Arts of form and detail, but one that also employs materials and the effects of light in quite a sumptuous way (recalling, for instance, the alabaster alabaster, fine-grained, massive, translucent variety of gypsum, a hydrous calcium sulfate. It is pure white or streaked with reddish brown. Alabaster, like all other forms of gypsum, forms by the evaporation of bedded deposits that are precipitated mainly from wall at the Caja Granada bank headquarters, AR August 2002). Walls are lined with timber panels, floors are made of polished stone and everything is executed in a spirit of understated elegance, tempered and animated by the play of softly filtered light. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] |
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