Granada General Savings Bank
The central offices of the Caja General, Granada's most important savings bank, are to be built on the city's undefined outskirts.
A great semi-cubical volume is proposed to serve as a reference to consolidate this new part of the city. In order to resolve the slope of the site and the ground floor level, a great base or podium is created, between the two highways that border the site on which the cubic piece sits, to accommodate parking space and future additions. The emerging stereotomic cubic box consists of a reinforced concrete 3 x 3 x 3-m grid, which serves as a mechanism to collect light, the central theme of this architecture. The two southern façades function as a brise-soleil, finely shading the potent light and providing the areas of open offices with illumination. The two northern façades of the individual offices, of stone and glass in horizontal strips, receive the uniform light characteristic of this orientation.
The central interior courtyard, a true impluvium of light, gathers the solid southern light from the skylights which, reflected by the alabaster parameters, increases the illumination of the open offices. In functional terms, the building is of great capacity, flexibility, and simplicity.
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