ENRIQUE NORTEN/ TEN arquitectos: STATE GOVERNMENT OFFICE BUILDING

STATE GOVERNMENT OFFICE BUILDING
Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico. 2008

Acapulco’s State Hall aims to integrate 37 government offices into one building. The program contemplates 25,000 m2 of office and support spaces and 30,000m2 of parking space.
The building attempts to embrace Acapulco’s modernist architecture from the 1950s by superposing pure "box" elements. Each box becomes an administrative section while their stacking generates different terraces that become waiting areas and circulation spaces.

The entire system is covered by one great ceiling that, by collecting water and being lined by solar cells, generates the building’s energy. At the same time, this grand roof becomes a protective shelter from the elements: rain, wind and sun.

The piled boxes and their roof generate various shaded spaces that, along with generous vegetation, bring the offices and exterior spaces to a truly comfortable environment, reducing considerably the A/C consumption throughout the project.

The program is distributed in 4 groups of offices according to their specialty and to the pedestrian circulation patterns. Each of these groups has an independent circulation system, so that the users of one group will never get in the way of another group’s users but will, simultaneously, share the same exterior space, the super structure and the complex’s facilities.

The project nudges to the east side of the site, opening a civic entry space at the corner of the building. All the circulation systems for the office clusters unwind from this starting point, allowing the public space to flow into the site. The boundary between the public and private space is delimited at the entrance to the offices, where information desks will filter the access to the agencies.