Castellana 44 Office Building

The Castellana 44 office building is a fine piece of architecture located on a privileged stretch of the best avenue in Madrid. It has a unique structure; all the floor slabs hang from a lattice of beams located on the top floor, leaving the first floor floating completely free of supports. However, this daring structure is hidden behind the air conditioning installations that have been added and its expressive value has disappeared from the project. The planted project shows and gives presence to this powerful structure and its expressive capacity and increases the thermal behavior of its envelope, which has become obsolete, and improves the order of its interior spaces to make it more flexible. Its powerful roof structure is incorporated into the interior space of the top floor. Its façade, heavy and heterogeneous, is transformed into a light folded veil that builds a simple and effective 'active' thermal cushion, and the reconfiguration of the accesses and circulations allows for the flexible and efficient use required of a contemporary office building.