Light glitters through thousands of tiny perforations in the bumpy steel exterior of a railway control centre in Spain.
Designed by Madrid architects Moreno del Valle, the two-storey building near Albacete station houses the control room for a high-speed railway between Madrid and Levante.
A single-storey L-shaped building adjoins the steel-clad block and is contrastingly constructed from concrete.
Vertical ridges texture the walls of this ancillary block, which surrounds a grass courtyard where the main entrance is located.
Inside the centre, a line of meeting rooms occupies a first-floor mezzanine that overlooks the double-height control room.
Desks in this room all face a single wall, where live information is charted.
Other buildings on Dezeen with perforated metal exteriors include one museum punctured by bullet-sized holes and another that moss is expected to grow on.
Photography is by Fernando Alda – see more images on the photographer’s website.
Here's a little more from the architects:
Railway Control Centre
High Speed Line Madrid-Levante
“…wise as the serpents, simple as the doves” (matthew 10:16)
The building is categorical on its implantation, an auxiliar plot nearby the albacete station railways.
The proposal gets presence without stridencies, with discretion.
The building has to solve a multiuse program, it also has to be a very symbolical landmark.
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This independent volume integration has allowed its distribution on the plot, in relation with its nearest surroundings; the highest block is situated in front of the railways, and now it’s been a referent from every point of view.
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The rest of the blocks, lower from the first, establish a relation with the rest of the technical buildings and help to reorder the area.
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Materials: Prefab concrete and steel in the ventilated façade.
Client: ADIF
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Situation: railways station, Albacete, Spain.
Author: David Moreno del Valle (Moreno del Valle Arquitectos).
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Collaborators: Daniel Vazquez Míguez, Arquitecto, Borja Martin Melchor, Arquitecto, Antonio Pascual Ciudad, ICCP, Jose Zamora Garcia, Aisin Simarro Levia.
Quantity surveyor: Mariano Oviedo Oviedo.
Engineers: Javier Ruiz López, Jorge Álvarez Garcia, Francisco Garcia Fernandez, Carlos Díaz Palacios
Construction company: Thales.
Built surface: 2.031,13m²