The customer posed a complicated challenge before us: to produce a US$400/m2 building with finished public areas and designed façades, while the rest was left in basic structural works. In order to attain such a difficult objective, a prefabricated 10 x 10 m concrete structure was designed, covered with a specially designed curtain wall façade. Since this type of solution generates very high radiation levels and, consequently, high temperatures in the structure’s interior, the frontage was covered in surrounding foliage aimed at refreshing the walls, to keep them in the shade, thereby reducing the heat load.

The cobblestone sidewalks are continuously dampened in order to reduce the heat of the walls. We took advantage of the reflections –rarely captured in photography– like cloned images of the same building or its surroundings, cast on the shining surfaces, which enrich the spatial experience, saturating it with simultaneous and strange images. The climbing plants are thumbergiae grandiflora which do not shed their leaves and whose lilac flowers bloom all year round. In eight weeks some of these had grown as tall as the third floor level.