IMPIVA Technopark

The territory in which the complex is located consists of chaotic suburban development, where individual buildings were created in a rather confusing manner. The oversized road network mixes with areas of traditional crops (in this case, orange groves), and in the background, the impressive mountain range Sierra de Gúdar looms. The building is intended to be the main headquarters of the Instituto de la Mediana y Pequeña Industria Valenciana (IMPIVA), an organization composed of young companies operating in various sectors, as well as companies that focus on the development of high-tech industrial facilities. Additional spaces - offices, conference rooms - can be rented separately for varying lengths of time if needed. These facts resulted in a typological and functional division of the complex requiring a certain degree of autonomy between individual parts of the building.
The project resolved this programmatic complexity through a series of elongated prisms - there are five in total, and they all roughly have the same dimensions - which are arranged according to the curve formed by the intersection of two roads delineating the plot. The masses are, in conjunction with the transverse communication system, designed in detail according to the required functions with a certain degree of adaptability sufficient to avoid the creation of an institution with a hierarchical system. It is a system that could theoretically continue indefinitely. From a compositional perspective, it is also about an abstract use of balance between masses and empty spaces, delineation of boundaries between the interior and exterior, and tension created by the "intervals between objects" embedded in the space.
The facades of the individual blocks have become the most readable manifest of the logic of the composition of the complex. They reflect the same effort in seeking rhythm and balanced composition through a clear plan: in short, it is about the use of counterpoint, a combination of successive contrasts, and the comparison of separate melodies connected by the same harmonic structure. Further development of the ensemble occurs through the proportions of the building volumes, the play of facades, and also the composition of various materials, which significantly intervene in the play of contrasts thanks to their different colors and textures.
The selection of materials ranges from ribbed porous surfaces of white concrete blocks to smooth modular aluminum cladding panels; this contrast is further enriched by wooden panels in warm colors, horizontal metal blinds, stainless steel profiles of windows and doors, and large glazed areas. Although there is a certain degree of correlation between the cladding materials used and the internal function - cold metal surfaces for more technical areas and panels with warm colors for administrative areas - what lends the whole a unified structure is the abstract composition of volumes that rather conceal than reveal and suggest than impose, as its goal is to achieve a balance consisting of silence and sequences of light and shadow.
The rich palette of materials reflects the clash between volumes and geometric proportions. These encounters take place without any effort to integrate the building into the situation: the surfaces surrounding the ensemble - grass in front, asphalt parking lot in the back - meet the building volumes always at a right angle, without any gesture that could diminish the abstract nature of the buildings.