Remodelling of the Banc Sabadell main office in Sabadell

Banc Sabadell was once a local bank and was founded in the city of the same name near Barcelona. The bank has recently undergone remarkable growth and now has a strong presence in Spain and abroad.

Our task was to modernise the bank’s historic headquarters, the place where it was born.

A number of issues were raised by this undertaking:

1.The relationship between the new and the old. Since the entire building is old, we had to proceed with a complex blend of historical restoration, functional and technical improvements (without a physical presence) and new additions.

2. An interior requires painstaking care over the details. This is what we have attempted to achieve.

3. It is a subtle task (and ought to be so), though the reconsideration of the space and its physical characteristics—the natural lighting, the acoustics and the transparency—is radical.

This is a project that has (and ought to have) the intensity and subtlety of a sonata by Schubert but does not (nor should it) have the grandiosity and stridency of a symphony by Mahler.

Josep LLuís Mateo

Typology: Office building
Project: 2004
Construction: 2005-2006
Surface: 3,486 m2
Location: Sabadell, Spain
Photo: Pedro Pegenaute and Beat Marugg