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Torres de Hercules
Building
Completed
2009
Office
All-Concrete
100.6 m / 330 ft
21
200
19,000 m² / 204,514 ft²
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Usually involved in the front end design, with a "typical" condition being that of a leadership role through either Schematic Design or Design Development, and then a monitoring role through the CD and CA phases.
The Torres de Hércules towers are located in the Guadacorte industrial park in the town of Los Barrios, Cádiz. The towers, alluding to the legendary “Pillars of Hercules”, emerge as rigid structures from the body of water that surrounds them. This office complex is comprised of two cylindrical towers of identical volume, joined by a crystalline prism which houses the bridge-hallways connecting the two buildings.
The outer appearance of the towers is configured by the structure of the building; a huge concrete lattice made up of abstracted giant letters from the sentence “Non plus ultra” (meaning: nothing further beyond). This lattice structure completely surrounds the perimeter of each of the towers and protects the interior of the offices from excessive solar gain.
The exterior curved shape was created by utilizing porexpan molds and auto-climbing formwork across three levels, so that a floor could be created and the floor below could be finished from outside at the same time. The marine plywood formwork was carefully revised in each placing.
The design of the building, and specifically that of the façade, allows for a considerable reduction in energy consumption. The combined mass of the concrete façade lattice, the internal building core and the floor slabs gives the building a great thermal inertia. Operable windows allow for natural ventilation of the interior, taking advantage of the good climate and frequent airflow, and each office unit has the ability to individually manage its heating and cooling. The impact of the ground-level parking lot was reduced by avoiding the use of asphalt. The paved areas and parking spaces are constructed from cobblestone and combined with areas of grass to allow the “land to breathe”.
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