Colegio de Arquitectos de Córdoba, España
Competition, 2007

The building of the Colegio de Arquitectos of Córdoba in Spain is an old house with art-noveau decoration. The house has been renewed and amplied in the ´90.
The house need actually a new intrvention due to the lack of adecuated spaces for the daily administrative work and for the cultural events which take eventually place there.

The competicion program asked for a new adition, but respecting the original house and manteining its historical charasteristics, and, the most important, its preminence as face of the building in the new configuration.  Of course, all of this with a minimal budget.

But, how do this when the increment of the square meters asked in the program is more or less the same than the area of the existing building?
We found the answer in de void of the patio. This is nowadays very entrance to the building and also had to be preserved.

We made two new patios instead of a new building. Three Patios is the name of the project and this enable us to make a intervention thinking in spaces more than in matter. That is why the building don´t looks like spectacular. And we think  architecture somes have also to take this way.

Finally, as habitually in these days, the winnar entrant was a spectacular Zaha-like design which was exactly the opposite what was asked, and probably imposible to be build. Good save architects!