Coll - Barreu Arquitectos

Policemen House

Policemen House
© Aleix Bagué

POLICEMEN HOUSE

Coll-Barreu Arquitectos

MODELS
Luis Montiel

INSTALLATIONS MECHANICAL AND ELECTRICAL
Indotec

STRUCTURES
NB35

FACADE
Coll-barreu Arquitectos

QUANTITY SURVEYOR
Juan Ángel Aketxe

COLLABORATORS
César Peña del Rey, Emilio Pardo, Katja Leszczynska, Fernando de la Maza, Andrés Tabera

PHOTOGRAPHS
Aleix Bagué, Juan Rodríguez

AREA
12792 m²

BUDGET
16.215.310,26 €

YEAR
2012

LOCATION
Bilbao, Spain

CATEGORY
Police Station

Text description provided by architect.

The building accommodates the central Public Safety services for a one million people urban area.

Policemen House
© Aleix Bagué
Policemen House
Courtesy of Coll-Barreu Arquitectos
Policemen House
Courtesy of Coll-Barreu Arquitectos

The ground on which the building sits was unstable. It was uncertain.

It is the result of having quickly filled an open mine, with pits up to 50 m deep, which formed a cavernous place in its physical reality and its memory.

Upstream, other mine sites have been transformed, also visible from the site, which confirm the history of this exchange between matter and soil, the life of the city and that of men, the densification of the territory and the air. 

Policemen House
© Juan Rodríguez
Policemen House
© Juan Rodríguez
Policemen House
© Juan Rodríguez

Policemen House’s concatenated planes are perceived from distant areas and set up a close relationship with the steep topography of the slope. Above this vacillating place, buildings do not have any mass.

Folded aluminum sheets acquire enough inertia to be supported in the air. The present construction is a system of layers. It is paper.

Policemen House
© Juan Rodríguez
Policemen House
© Juan Rodríguez

We do not understand that the current architecture tries to simulate a massive construction, because the massive construction no longer exists.

In this building corresponds, at the same time, to the mobile ether condition of the land.

Policemen House
© Juan Rodríguez
Policemen House
© Juan Rodríguez

 It is appropriate that the policemen house has been made of paper, it is part of our democratic contract: the police are a piece of paper.

Our buildings are paper, as they are our security, our convictions, our society: uncertain, temporary, fleeting.

Policemen House
© Aleix Bagué
Policemen House
© Aleix Bagué


Policemen House
© Aleix Bagué
Policemen House
© Juan Rodríguez
Policemen House
© Juan Rodríguez
Policemen House
© Juan Rodríguez
Policemen House
Courtesy of Coll-Barreu Arquitectos
Policemen House
© Juan Rodríguez
Policemen House
Courtesy of Coll-Barreu Arquitectos


Policemen House
Ground Floor Plan
Policemen House
First Floor Plan
Policemen House
Second Floor Plan
Policemen House
Third Floor Plan


Policemen House
Diagrams


Policemen House
Elevations
Policemen House
Detail
Policemen House
Site Plan

Coll - Barreu Arquitectos
T +34 915 399248
Coll - Barreu Arquitectos
P.º de la Castellana, 115, Tetuán, 28046 Madrid, Spain