Red Cross Provincial Office in Malaga

Located at an urban crossroads, a meeting point for the suburbs of the historic city, the architectural complex of the new Red Cross office summarizes the complexity, achievements and contradictions of a kaleidoscopic city like Malaga.

Architecture has to commit itself doubly. On the one hand, it must guarantee the viability of an idea by translating the project's purpose into construction. On the other, it has to contribute to the city a piece that respectfully incorporates into the urban fabric.

At the dawn of the 21st century, the concept of sustainability is consolidated as something more than a neologism or passing fad. If our urban habitats are to be re-naturalized, the work must consequently incorporate new functionalities adapted to the needs of each field. And offer fluid and versatile spaces ideal for easy adaptation to change. The office is evolving towards more diaphanous and open environments, fully incorporating courtyards, terraces and roofs as exterior work spaces in which to substantially dignify both the daily work of the Red Cross employees, collaborators and volunteers and, above all, of its potential users, whose personal and social circumstances require a space precisely adapted to them in which to attend to their needs in a dignified way, while at the same time being calm and relaxed.

But although function must precede form, in the case of this building, its location and its integration into the urban context in which it was born, has the same value.

The building and its surroundings were conceived from a vacuum, hence the idea of a construction that would collapse the block, aligning itself with the roads and depleting the available buildable area on the plot was obviated.

On urban level, essential is offering the neighborhood a new park.

The idea of the park-garden was started, which was to give continuity to the pre-existing plant plot. This new urban green space climbs the building's facades, courtyards and terraces until it reaches the roof terrace with a landscaped roof solution that appropriates the geographical context of the city of Malaga on a territorial scale. The building's enclosures in turn reproduce plant motifs, roots and branches in textures and shapes that the light enhances in the bas-reliefs on the ground floor and in the perforated lattices on the upper floors.

By fragmenting the geometry of the building, it was possible to increase the specific surface of the facades, increasing the number of openings to the outside and forcefully introducing a previously filtered and treated light into the available spaces.

The common spaces and lobbies, socialization and co-work rooms as well as meeting and representation rooms, summarize in their design and distribution a clear intention of movement, of seeing and, in turn, being seen. The areas are no longer understood to be watertight and closed but are related as communicating vessels with each other through these communication cores and shared meeting rooms.
The main staircase is itself a sculptural element that is implanted in the backbone as an apparently auxiliary construction and with a certain industrial stamp that aims to convey the resolution and easily adaptable capacity of the institution.

As a mutable entity, which in order to be ever closer to people has to adapt rapidly to a changing reality, the building has to serve that function without conditions.

The longevity and worth of a project depend directly on that adaptive capacity. The new headquarters of the Provincial Red Cross Office in Malaga is capable of adapting to the changes and fluctuations of a reality that increasingly requires greater efficiency and versatility to achieve this.

At last, the circle has closed.

Red Cross returns to Ciudad Jardin.