This Security Centre is the first of its kind on the Canary Islands. It aims to offer a better service to society by taking an integrated approach, bringing the offices of different police forces, the Civil Guard and the National Police Force, under a single roof.
The building is located in a residential neighbourhood characterised by marginal building practices and exponential growth and singularly lacking in public facilities. In this context, the building is integrated into its surroundings through a continuation of the pattern of the surrounding blocks. Its continuous skin traces the limits of the plot on the second floor, while opening up on the ground floor, offering a space of urban encounter.
A suspended volume which is completely closed off from the outside defines the institutional scale of the building. It contains more private offices as well as the police chief’s residence and is organised around a series of interior patios, offering a protected, luminous, inward-looking space that is adapted to the private nature of the investigative police work of the various police units and squads located on the upper floor.
The system of interior patios, interconnected by means of a central circulation ring, organizes the interior. The patios serve to illuminate both the workspaces and the circulation routes. The alternating layout of the patios creates the perception of a single workspace that allows for a common sense of corporate purpose and promotes teamwork, while maintaining the privacy of the various police units.
On the main floor, adjoining the entrance foyer, we find the more public uses of the building – the Documentation and Immigration Office and the Complaints Office – which create a connection with the local community by opening up to the public space via a covered porch. Diaphanous waiting rooms open onto gardens located both inside and outside the building.
On the street level the borders between interior and exterior are dissolved in a continuous space, transparent and open, that forms an extension of the urban space. Transparency and proximity to society are the new concepts defining the Security Centre as a place open to the community.
Project
Santa Lucía Security Centre
Situation
C/Escorial esq. Dr. Negrín s/n. Vecindario, Santa Lucía de Tirajana. Gran Canaria. Canary Islands. Spain
Architects
GPY Arquitectos
Project Team
Juan Antonio González Pérez, Urbano Yanes Tuña, Constanze Sixt, Laura Pérez Rodríguez, Samuel de Wilde Calero
Technical Team
Luis Darias, Edward Lynch
Structural Engineers
Reveriego y Asociados Arquitectos S.L.
Civil Engineers
Gpi Ingenieros
Client
Ministry of the Interior of Spain
Contract
Seis | Dragados
Constructed Surface
4,325 m2
Photographs
Efraín Pintos, Joaquín Ponce de León
Awards
Premio de Arquitectura Miguel Martín-Fernández de la Torre: First Prize | Architecture 256 Magazine: World Top Designs of 2014: Honourable Mention | WAF World Architecture Festival, 2012: Shortlisted | WAN Civic Buildings Award, 2012: Shortlisted.
Publications
Magazine: Urbanism and Architecture (China), n.21 (2013)
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