CORPORATE GA

GA is a corporative project found in the city of Juarez, Mexico, GA it is a Building Company that specializes in low income housing; its approximate size is 1250 square meters in 3000 square meters of land. The architectural program was divided into these areas:

1. sales and customer service
2. finances 3. rentals
4. management (CEO offices)
5. parking lot

Juarez is the 4th most important city in Mexico, it has 2,000,000 inhabitants, it is in the northern Mexico it is the border with El Paso, Texas USA. Together they are the largest transnational community in the world, with more than 3,000,000 inhabitants, extremely hot and has desert like weather, in the winter it becomes very cold and temperatures can fall below –15C, with snow and rain, during the summer months the temperature reaches 45C. Structure and Materials We mentioned before our basic concept inspired by the game Jenga and the tree like structure, we realized that by taking pieces from the bottom of the structure we could still support great volume above, balancing the empty spaces with the ones that weren’t , we wanted a strong and imposing structure, but keeping the idea of lightness and floatation, something like when one looks at tree with enormous branches and a slim trunk, we applied this to our design, working the levels in cantilever. Basically we have a centered mixed structure that works as a main vertebra, there are 4 concrete columns at the center of the building they support transversal steel beams that work in cantilever, 8 meters over hanged on each side. In between the columns we located the vertical circulation allowing the access by elevator to each floor, and it also meads the staircase and the buildings ducts. It has light weight slabs allowing the structure to defy gravity. The foundation had to be strong it prevents the building to overturn taking in consideration that the area has some times winds up to 90 km. per hour. Deep foundation pillars were the solution. The materials we used: Concrete, steel, glass, marble and wood. These 4 materials are easy to maintain, they are clean, weather resistant, strong, some how they are timeless. We have located the building in the center of the lot, as forward as possible; the visual contact is imposing and besides being able to see right through the building gives the impression of a floating structure, we did not wanted the parking lot as the main façade. GA is working today in the new headquarters and they have improved sales with there new building, they have optimized time, space, and interaction with them selves and clients; they have a new icon for their Company and for the city of Juarez.