Badalona Law Courts

The building housing the lawcourts in Badalona is situated in such a way that it completes one of the residential blocks in the centre of the town. This narrow block is organized in three bands: two strips of building parallel to the street, and the interior strip which serves as courtyard. Our building, which completes this layout, embraces this organizational structure in its interior. The bands parallel to the street house the court offices, the central strip contains the communal elements (waiting rooms, accesses) and a large indoor courtyard which provides the spatial connection between the directly productive areas of the building.

The load-bearing structure is a direct reflection of this layout by means of concrete screens which configure the limits of the central space and a fine network of metal pillars supporting continuous concrete floor slabs.

The facades are of natural stone, fixed in place using various different techniques. Large, bush-hammered ashlars have been used on the ground floor, while throughout the rest of the building the stone has been employed after the fashion of a curtain wall: galvanized steel uprights support the slender slabs of stone by means of stainless steel clamps. This system of construction effectively converts the stone into something light, with empty joints, doing away with the weight of the material. An accidental feature of the programme: the need to provide eight sets of living quarters prompted the mansard structure of the building, fundamental to its appearance, which seeks to connect (unite and separate) in formal terms the floors of offices with the total volume of the building as a whole.

Typology: Public Building
Competition: 1st Prize
Project: 1987-1990
Construction: 1991
Surface: 2,500 m2
Location: Badalona, Barcelona