A: How would you describe this project?
RB: The Abertis building is a part of a whole new edge-landscape, three buildings with a continuous façade to the Ronda Litoral, form an interior plaza that conforms a patio protected from the highway.
A: Why is the interior plaza red?
RB: The interior world is soft, contrasting with the double glass wall. In the patio we recover the elements of Mediterranean and Catalan architecture as the stucco, in red, in this particular case, we used a technique developed in the Arabic countries, famous tac-lac.
A: ¿You combine construction technologies?
RB: We always learn something new, for each project we develop and use a specific methodology. Our aim is to create an architectural design appropriate for every particular space, place, function, client, technology. This is our work, to design and build the best project possible within a cost-effective operation.
A: Cost-effective?
RB: Yes, there is a strong tendency to reduce price and quality.
A: You mean that your clients have more benefits?
RB: Yes, of course, ask some of them, for example, Dior, Cartier, Rochas, Shiseido, Parisbas, Swift, JP Morgan, AXA and Chateau Lafitte Rothschild: all these companies have multiplied the final value of their buildings.
A: Because of the brand-name Ricardo Bofill?
RB: Evidently, Bofill is an architectural brand known world-wide.
A: Let’s go back to Abertis headquarters and its façade…
RB: The double skin façade was proposed some years ago, and has been used in many projects. Even though it was inspired, only ideally, in the great Egyptian or Medieval historical walls, the double glass façade has in common with these walls the element of thickness, acting as container, as barrier. We don’t find these components in the single glass walls.
The double skin was used in several buildings that we have built, in the 1992 Airport for Barcelona. The double skin façade has been approved as an important energy saving, acoustic and thermic isolation feature.
A: In the case of Abertis headquarters you have chosen the glass-angles…
RB: Our starting point was the strong presence of the traffic on the highway, the edge-condition. The approach here was different to my previous projects in the Parc Logistic.
In this new phase three buildings conform an angled façade towards the highway, a dynamic, solid and transparent façade, in an attempt to capture the paradoxes of a new urban landscape.
A: Tell us about the distribution
RB: It is an optimized ground plan; with a feature, a central greek-cross shape open space. This space allows access from the lobby to the flexible working zones.
A: Is this ground plan comparable to the one of your Chicago tower by the river?
RB: Yes, it has some elements in common, the efficiency ratios exist from the beginning, these are the relationship between the gross and the usable space is the efficiency ratio, the result of studies on economical and architectural functionality for a building.
Architecture needs to incorporate all parameters.
Barcelona, Junio X 2007
