Connected to the foyer of an elegant luxury hotel, the Café de la Reina or “BUR-BU-JA-JA” adds a colorful and casual note to the complex. A cafeteria during the day, the space transforms into a sophisticated cocktail bar at night, the patrons immersed in iridescent aquatic colors.
A long curved green bar runs through the space, while “seaweed” camouflages the curtain wall and the mundane view of the city beyond, dissolving it into small fragments of an organic, aquatic world. Smoothly curved walls with reflecting belts, circular benches and round tables create a sensual atmosphere where space and movement interact.
Aragonia
Zaragoza, Spain
Belén Moneo, Jeffrey Brock
Andrea Caputo, María Pierres, Sandra Formigo, Andrés Barrón, Spencer Leaf and Silvia Fernández
Andrés Barrón
This service station is located on the A-1 highway, one of Spain's 6 major national highways, near the town of San Agustin de Guadalix and approximately 30 km outside of Madrid. This architecture project is comprised of three curvilinear canopy structures and a rectilinear building which houses, in addition to the service station's facilities, a full service restaurant.
In the 1940's and 1950's the design of service stations by architecture studios exuded optimism and modernity; the structures employed cantilevers and projections that gave a sense of magic to the spaces below. Perhaps the difference between these service stations and the one we have designed is that ours has a more playful and contemporary character, thanks to the curved shape of the canopies. It is not only a shelter: it is fluid movement, clearly looking to the natural landscape of rolling hills in the distance.
In this project the program calls for the structure to act as signage, but while attending to this we also strived to create an architecture that is responsive and respectful of its surroundings. The canopies are seen from afar like birds or clouds on the horizon, hovering between the sky and the land.
José Antonío Núnez, Valaes S.L.
Road N-I (A1), PK. 34.000
3,714 sqft
79,556 sqft
Belén Moneo, Jeffrey Brock
Benjamín Llana, Andrés Barrón, Sandra Formigo
Moneo Brock
Andrés Barrón
NB35, Jesús Jiménez, José Luís Lucero
Aguado Ruiz S.A.
The Quinta Mutis campus in Bogotá is one of the three campuses of the University of El Rosario in Bogotá. The projected building is located on the southwest corner of the campus adding almost 25,000 m² of classrooms, laboratories and common spaces. The building will replace some temporary structures built years ago, currently used as classrooms, adding significant new area and at a much higher level of amenity.
Moneo Brock has carefully designed the project to emphasize and update the values of the University, with the goal of opening the campus and providing it with a large agora having been priority throughout the project’s development.
The taller volume of laboratories has been given the shape of a mineral outcropping that responds to the city-scape of Bogotá and its environment, while the lower volume adapts to the surrounding buildings, some of them of historical value for the city. Both shapes share common spaces and emphasize communication, facilitating the practical use of the building.
A large terrace on top of the lowest volume opens the cafeteria to panoramic views of Bogotá. This plaza-garden is not only open to the interior common spaces of the campus, but to the surrounding city and its inhabitants.
Sustainable design and flexibility were both high priorities in the design of the new building. This project is being developed by a multidisciplinary team based in Madrid and in Bogotá.
Bogotá, Colombia
270,000 sqft
Belén Moneo, Jeffrey Brock, Fernando de la Carrera, Alejandro Cavanzo
Francisco Blázquez, Irene Alberdi
Moneo Brock
Moneo Brock
This sustainable proposal seeks to preserve and revitalize the ecosystem of the River Tajo, recuperating this natural area for the enjoyment of all citizens of Talavera pointing out the possibility this Tajo Natural Park, beginning in Talavera, can grow, adding territories and cities in such a way that, in a few years, we could follow the river from the Guadarrama mountain to its mouth in Lisbon.
The project is understood as a series of interventions, all consisting with this promising idea. The River’s protagonism in the Talavera de la Reina cityscape will be reasserted. It will be made accessible for the enjoyment of all citizens through a series of interventions and activities that bring the natural landscape of the river closer to the city. Finally, this park could become a tourist attraction for Talavera at a national level, as a supra-municipal infrastructure, with economic and social opportunities for the whole city.
The proposed solutions and objectives include sustainable measures to improve water quality, recover the habitats and species of this section of the Tajo River, improve the landscape and enable an increase in the use of the river and its banks in forms commensurate with the conservation of its biodiversity and its landscape. Opening the project to citizen participation should furthermore serve to achieve greater knowledge of the river’s history and evolution.
It is intended that the river be for "all" in the broadest sense; allowing the growth of the vegetation and the complex of habitats specific to the place, sheltering numerous autochthonous species of flora and fauna, improving and recovering the enormously attractive scenic landscapes of the river and its fertile plain, and allowing access by the citizens of and visitors to Talavera to the shores and islands for their use and enjoyment. In short, it is about achieving a Natural and Human River Landscape Park.
Confederación hidrográfica del Tajo y Ayuntamiento de Talavera de la Reina
Talavera de la Reina
MONEO BROCK, BLASCO ESPARZA, EIN
Irene Alberdi, Mathilde Noirot