Studio Banana TV interviews Ignacio Paricio, from Clotet-Paricio-Gené, authors of the Alicia Foundation building near Barcelona.
The architecture
The new Caixa Manresa building which houses the ALICIA Foundation (Food and Science) is located near the Sant Benet de Bages Monastery, a strategic point in central Catalonia. Here, the Llobregat River embraces a magnificent, flat area of land with a sudden gesture called “El Ángulo” (The Angle), the setting for this impressive monastery, an old textile factory and the home of its former owners. The new building is not aimed at becoming a fourth element that blurs the focus on the former features, instead striving to distance itself from their concepts and geometries.
This building strives to give the user a vivid experience of being in a place surrounded and invaded by nature. For this reason, the vertical plane that separates the interior and exterior is fully glazed. Depending on the intensity of the light, the glazing is transparent or shiny, making the building volume ‘disappear’ sometimes, while at other times it becomes fully integrated into its setting by reflecting the exterior, like a mirror.
The geometry on the plan shies away from the orthogonality of the neighbouring buildings as a consequence of its respect for the old walls, fences, tracks, plantations and outstanding trees. In this way, a free, polyhedral form is defined in which interior and exterior embrace indissociably.
Solar radiation and light control are essential to ensure interior comfort, which is why the building is surrounded by walls, some of them old, others new, many opaque, others that include picture windows, but all with the same height as the opening fenestration, set at distances that range between three and 14 metres. This intermediate space, only interrupted by the entrance to the building, is the true thick facade for which the tree plantations and the horizontal pergolas at the height of the soffit ensure high-quality light and sunshading. This is the space that allows everything to be prolonged and take over this quiet, private garden.
Generous north-facing skylights balance the perimeter light at the most distant points.
The structure
Perimeter structural props are used to generate a very free plan, reduced to 70 x 70 cm tubing that accompanies the glazing joints every 1.2 m. A lightweight slab with a span of up to 11 m rests on this succession of elements on the facade. Service cores that are built using concrete walls stabilise each branch of the building.
The facade
The perimeter structure facilitates the juxtaposition of aluminium shapes without thermal bridges, onto which Climalit glazing with structural silicon is attached to generate an uninterrupted glazed facade.
The special features of this 1.20 x 4.60 m Climalit glazing allows the zones which have to hidden (soffit, floor slab edge and inverted roof) to be made opaque using screenprinting treatment. This configuration permits the heat protection values to be lowered to less than 1.5.
The pivoting doors are specially designed, and their construction features provide the same advantages as the rest of the façade glazing.
The facilities
The heat-cooling generator is located in a basement room, rooftop courtyards associated with the skylights are used for the air conditioning equipment, while all the service lines are located in the inspectable technical floor and the drop ceiling.
