Basque Health Department Headquarters

- Secondary Research -

The new headquarters of the Basque Health Department in Bilbao is a brilliant block of glass and steel designed by architect Juan Coll- Barreu. The most important feature is its polyhedral glass facade that allows light into the interior, making it a transparent, luminous space. This building is another corner lot in Spain and it contrasts to all the other traditional buildings surrounding the building which all look the same.

The Basque Health Department breaks up all these identical buildings with its sharp and geometric shape that it has as it sticks out from around the corner. Too study this building and its shape I created elevations of the sides of the buildings where you can tell it’s a lot of geometric shapes that are pulled from one another to make this unique shell for a building.

The exterior of this building acts in a similar way to the retail store on the paseo de Garcia where this geometric glass façade is laced onto this corner lot of many Spanish residential homes.

The façade creates a interesting and unique and makes it stand out from the surrounding area. This is key due to the buildings role as an Health department so they are seen and ready to help and people don’t get lost within hundreds of he same buildings. Through this juxtaposition it creates an interesting building made up multiple geometric sections.

By researching this building I gathered images from which I drew the plan of the building where you can see how the building follow the natural shape of the street yet totally juxtaposes to the rest with its sharp and geometric forms. In a way it’s a spike like building made of buildings that allows plenty of light through. This shows how even from one material such as glass you can make an interesting shape.