After an open call, 30 international teams were selected to design a new building complex for the European Commission in Brussels with the offices of the Commissions, as well as childcare centres, a visitor centre, restaurants shops and public spaces with green areas.

The declared aim was to increase efficiency and reduce its environmental footprint, setting an example of sustainable construction.

The towers are cut to maximize the allowed breadth facing Loi, but their depth is also cut at 5 degrees east of the south to optimize solar exposure through the year. This results in six façade orientations.

Contradicting the brief, our proposal keeps the existing buildings of most recent construction, those on phase 2, which represent a substantial proportion of the requested surfaces.

The car park runs along Rue de la Loi, on the side of the plot, not affected by the structure of the towers. It is all underground from Loi, but is accessed at mid-level from Joseph II, providing options for sectoring, and quick flows.

Over fifty different stone and cladding varieties meet in the opaque façade, each one coming from the geological tradition of a current EU country.

RMdP is the first C2C (Cradle to Cradle) building in France. A regenerator of a former factory, it is an economic, cultural and environmental activator.

The MdP (House of the Project) hosts meetings, exhibitions, calls for tender, as needed to reactivate the 1.000 Ha area into the circular economy.

It is also improving soil and air conditions, eating up the chemicals left over from former industrial activity.

There were no earthworks, using driven piles that may be recovered; the structure and façades are designed for disassembly and reuse.

Materials are biodegradable or recyclable, with zero harmful chemicals

Sanitation generates nutrients, with the chimneys of three dry toilets as a main feature of the façade.

Landscaping cleans the soil; the building feeds on clean energies, with controlled solar exposure and the principle of the thermal onion.

Technology reuse is easy, the designers call it “superfurniture”: mobile equipment units to provide a specific function to any space.

La superficie expositiva de la propuesta es un sencillo panel pintado de color negro mate para que la luz natural destaque al máximo las obras de la feria.

La planta alta de LaSede del COAM es una galería acristalada, bañada en luz y con magníficas vistas de los tejados de Madrid.
La feria se recorre por el perímetro del edificio, junto a la luz y las vistas, desde donde se va accediendo a cada bahía expositiva que queda marcada por uno de los elementos singulares. De esta manera las zonas de exposición se abren a la luz natural, aunque siempre evitando la luz directa.

An energy producing park, built with recycled materials. Park activities, cycle and pedestrian lanes coexist in harmony with yards for storage and the management of construction material.

The park around the building is also built with a very controlled budget, and its features are productive systems, rather than an expense.

The city's road work department material storage integrates with pedestrian and cycling routes. It is part of a European Interreg MP4 project: Making Places Profitable.

Water harvesting in two steps: the roof provides clean water for all the toilets, the workshops, and the vehicle cleaning point.

An old Madrid apartment becomes a place to live and work. The large available area is treated as a country plot, building a small house with a garden at one end, and leaving the rest as labor fields.

The house-shelter is built with lightweight and cheap materials, forming boxes that are stacked, juxtaposed or doubled, so that their interiors can be used according to precise functions.

In the fields of labor, the most subjective operation is carried out: the discovery of the landscape.

Scraping, smoothing, puffing, discovering episodes, traces, wounds, that appear before us in the distance. Distance of time: hand-painted papers a century and a half ago, overlays of different tastes, fashions, traces of different uses and ways of life. Distance in space: if we sit at a point in this open space, we have before us a panorama of episodes that invite us to approach. We get up called by a point of undefined colours, we want to see what it is, to feel its texture, its smell, to lose ourselves in its silhouettes. A sutured wound, a meeting between two times, a Pompeian red surrounded by a random mixture of vegetal, symbolic and geometric decorations. But, little by little, even the mouldy glue of the burlap was gaining our respect.

The ground floor has an active program that offers pedestrians in transit a reading of its interior, which translates into an invitation to various levels of access.

The windows multiply the contact with the outside. Its depth in space increases the amount of information that can be displayed, allowing the random passer-by to occupy an intermediate place. They facilitate the transition between the free public space and the interior space for cultural exchange. In the other sense, the windows expand the activity, making the passers-by feel momentarily part of the event.

Between shelves full of books we suddenly come across stands where we can relax for a moment while charging the mobile or having a coffee from a machine. We propose corners, places of passage where to sit until class starts, steps from which to look, and maybe say hello; meet, talk.

Velvet curtains can block light when needed, work acoustically, and at the same time give this space a theatrical character. The decision to surround the auditorium with curtains, help us manage its size, give privacy to the bathrooms, hide screens, integrate the interpreter booth, camouflage the warehouse doors …

The stage has a door that leads to the library. The library can function as a backstage. The library window stand can function as a Green room before the concert, the musicians can practice in front of passersby, announcing their recital.

The configuration of the facade is used to create reading spaces around the windows, and storage space for books in the opaque parts. A continuous element is created along the facade that varies its shape according to a specific use, reading or storage.

The teaching system used by the teaching staff of the Cervantes Institute benefits from a circle arrangement of the students, with a free space in the center to organize conversation subgroups. We propose to mark the circle in the classrooms with an element of simple construction that also works acoustically due to its recycled felt overlay.

Its construction methods, low impact and low cost, minimize imports and create local industry with simple, lightweight and compact materials, mostly locally produced.

It is flexible, to adapt to changing uses over time without investing more resources.

The Academie MWD sits at a uniquely varied crossroads; South: the main square; North: Wolfsputten, a protected forest; West: CC Westrand, a Brutalist community centre; and East a series of quaint suburban villas.
Image and texture dematerialise the volume: the façade seems to blend into the forest.

We carefully modulate scale and form: the jagged edge of the roof mimics those of the homes across the street, growing gradually to the cantilevered auditorium at the other end, and rising up to look face to face towards the monumental volumes of CC Westrand.

The building changes dramatically as we move along the sidewalk; walking towards the forest, we see forest; walking towards the grey Westrand we see greys, whites and blue skies.

Looking straight into the façade, we see the colours of a painting by A. Hoppenbrouwers, the architect of neighbouring Westrand.