Bank of Spain in Girona

Clotet, Paricio & Associats (2)
Clotet, Paricio & Associats
Ignacio Paricio Ansuátegui
Lluís Clotet i Ballús

Large trucks periodically arrived from the head office to the underground garage connected to the safe and from there the money was moved by forklift to small garages on the upper floor from where it was distributed by vans to the various local banks. Small offices complemented a programme that generated very little urban activity and strict security measures required the building to be completely isolated from neighbouring buildings.

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Its most suitable location would have been on a wasteland and next to a motorway access. Paradoxically, the chosen site was located in one of the busiest areas of the Ensanche in Girona, forming part of a block in a closed building and right at a singular point where the turn of the Gran Vía inevitably made it become an important end of perspective in which a huge party wall and some neglected rear walls stood out, waiting for the block to complete its planned volume and hide them.

EUmies Award
Hisao Suzuki

On the other hand, in front of the site and on the other side of Gran Vía, the opening of the great Plaça de la Constitució was planned, and consequently the new building once again took centre stage from another point of view. A pair of small, delicate adjoining buildings completed a heterogeneous and cluttered landscape, to which a low, discreet building could not seem to provide an adequate response. The project proposed to artificially increase the strictly necessary volume demanded by the programme in order to have enough material to handle all the urban issues.

Hisao Suzuki

A semi-cylinder with its axis centred on the visual extension of the Gran Vía housed an oversized operations courtyard, and was attached along its axial plane to a prismatic body of lesser height that followed the guidelines of the secondary streets and contained garages, offices and archives. Part of the half-cylinder continued above the prism while it could be seen from the Gran Vía, and a plant installation on the roof helped to further increase the final volume.

Both the disproportionately high and massive fence that surrounded the bank and the small premises that blended in with the elegant neighbouring buildings were intended to camouflage its status as an isolated building and to maintain the alignments of the block in an attempt not to interrupt the volumetric definition of the streets. The entire construction was planned with load-bearing masonry walls for the same reasons of durability and economy in maintenance as in other works built in those years, and the option chosen was clearly shown both in the configuration of the elevations and in the layout of the floors.

Hisao Suzuki

General information

Bank of Spain in Girona

YEAR

1989

Status

Built

Option to visit

Visit from public roads

Address

Ave. 20 de Juny, 2

17001 Gerona - Girona

Latitude: 41.984051414

Longitude: 2.8196278545

Classification

Building materials

Brick

Built area

501 - 5000 m²

Awards

ACUE 1990

FAD 1989

Involved architects

Ignacio Paricio Ansuátegui

Lluís Clotet i Ballús

Involved architectural firms

Clotet, Paricio & Associats

Information provided by

MITMA

Website links

EUmies Award

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Location

41.984051414 2.8196278545 cbe15b41-a5d1-4fa8-9271-b5b7c8d7d7e7 Built
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Built
Temporary
Lost
Unbuilt project

Itineraries

1980-1989

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