The project for the new Hospital Dr. Josep trueta in Girona (Spain) will be exhibited at COAC
June 17 – July 17, 2010

The exhibition “Arquitectura per a la Salut” compiles projects and works around Architecture for the Health in Catalonia during the last 18 years (1991-2009) and includes the model for the new Hospital Dr. Josep Trueta in Girona.

CatSalut, the Catalan Health Service, the public body that guarantees the right of health care protection for all citizens in Catalonia, organizes this exhibition at COAC (Catalan Architects Association). 

New Hospital Doctor Trueta. Girona
1st Award restricted competition 2006. Project 2008-2009.
Construction 2010-2012.

Client: GISA / Departament de Salut - Generalitat de Catalunya
Surface: 117.000 m2

Borneo Docks from Josep Lluis Mateo on Vimeo.

It is now ten years since the construction of the 26 housing units in the Borneo Dock development (Amsterdam).

Since then, the concept of housing in Borneo has revolutionized existing models.
At the time, it was a new plan for a renovated urban fabric in the city centre.
The site, a former port area, had become rundown after falling into disuse when container shipping traffic was moved to new ports.

It is very interesting to look back and assess the intensive reconstruction of a former no man’s land as a place to live, with dwellings outlined against a maritime backdrop that makes them unique.
The 26 housing units designed by Josep Lluís Mateo provide the setting for the daily lives of families who opted for a different urban lifestyle. This is the tenth anniversary of a landscape of water and everyday life in Borneo Dock.

“The complex should be understood not from the sequence of its elements, but from their interrelationship. In such a beautiful and unique place, surrounded by water on three sides, the project strives to create an impression of openness, distance and lightness. The complex should not appear hard, compact and massive, in the manner of a permanent protective dyke, but seeks, rather to open itself up and- relatively speaking- to melt away” .

Josep Lluís Mateo

 
26 housing units in Amsterdam
Author: Josep Lluís Mateo | Mateo Arquitectura
Client-Contractor: Bouwbedrijf m j de nijs en zonen bv
Site: Borneo Sporenburge | Borneo Dock, Amsterdam
Project: 1996
Construction: 2000
Building surface: 5.700  m2
Photo: Xavier Ribas

Remodelling of the entrance and the ground and first floors of Banco Sabadell in Barcelona (2007-2010)

On various occasions, we were asked to intervene in the most public areas of a lovely building dating from the 1950s (the work of the architect Francesc Mitjans).

The entrance hall had been disfigured by a series of interventions that had rendered it complex and disjointed; we set out to clarify its function and its urban role.

The interiors are communicated by a circular staircase, which we freely restored. The floor slopes gradually to change level in order to avoid the existing steps, and the ceiling constantly reacts to these movements.

The ceiling, particularly in the innermost areas, serves to concentrate the light and is highly expressive.

Josep Lluís Mateo

 Remodelling of the main branch of Banco Sabadell in Barcelona (Torre Diagonal)

Author: Josep Lluís Mateo | Mateo Arquitectura
Client: Banco Sabadell
Site: Barcelona
Project: 2008
Construction: 2010
Surface: 1000 m2

Photos: Adrià Goula

The project for the women’s prison in Barcelona will be exhibited at COAC
June 10 – September 4, 2010

“Arquitectura judicial y penitenciaria” (Legal and Penitentiary Architecture) is the title of the exhibition that compiles the most important projects and works in Catalonia during the last 7 years: 33 judicial buildings and 12 prisions. Mateo Arquitectura participates with his project for the women’s prison in St. Llorenç d’Hortons (Barcelona), including the model and graphic material. 

NATURE AND PROJECT

The project site is characterized by a sequence of low mountains (planted with pine and evergreen oak) and minor watercourses lined by ash and more evergreen oak, with crop fields in between. High-profile contemporary infrastructures (HST line, industry, etc.) form a drastic intersection to this system.

Although our intervention is new, we aim to make the relationship with nature the central point of the implantation. Since this is a more open prison than usual, where some of the inmates have the opportunity to move around, the building is concentrated round the outer edges, freeing up the centre as a communal space.

The project continues the existing plant structure:

1. Completing the woods above (also serving to consolidate a plant boundary to the adjacent house)
2. Consolidating the stream below, with a drainage system laid out beneath the HST layout
3. Freeing up the centre as a leisure area laid out around sports and cultural amenities.

Internal circulation is circular: the traffic turning points accommodate various small plazas for pedestrians.

BRIEF

In keeping with the site’s specific characteristics (orientation, topography, views) and the functional criteria governing the brief, the less restrictive modules are laid out on the higher tracts of land, commanding the best views and optimum sunlighting. The basic residential and secure detention modules are located on lower land, terracing down the slope to form a natural boundary to the yards.

…………………………………………………….

Architect: Mateo Arquitectura
Client: GISA (Departament de Justícia de la Generalitat)
Site: Barcelona
Project: 2006-2007
Surface:  40.000 m2

The Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade (ICEX) is preparing a video about projects and works of Josep Lluís Mateo. This film will take part of a serial of reports about Spanish architecture and it pretends show a studio with vocation and international experience, a studio also adapted to digital advances (web 2.0 as an example).

“Filmoteca de Catalunya” at the National Glyptotheque in Athens, Greece.
May 20 - August 29, 2010

The exhibition compiles the most relevant examples of contemporary Spanish architecture.
Mateo Arquitectura includes a model and graphic material of the new Film Theatre in Barcelona, which is now under construction.

Filmoteca de Catalunya from Josep Lluis Mateo on Vimeo. 
Video: Tiago Camara

[[title]] First Prize. Restricted competition.
2004-2010 – Barcelona

PROCESS

My initial interest was in understanding the brief and the place. We built a model with fragments of what was to go inside, with no specific attempt to give form or unity. We arranged this conglomerate at a tangent to one of the sides of the site, constructing a street and freeing up a plaza in front of it.

RESTRICTED COMPETITION. AUTUMN 2004

The next phase obviously required precision. The cinemas, a very important part of the project, were put in the basement to reduce the volumetric impact of the building.

The context then became stronger: the plaza became the entire ground floor, and the material for its construction had to be concrete, uniting structure and finish in a continuous mass which, to me, seemed to establish a relation with the shabby, dilapidated masses of its neighbours.

I was particularly interested in the volumetric expressivity of the short sides of the parallelepiped, and its potential to define the corners of the existing streets.

EXECUTIVE PROJECT. 2005

With our structural engineers we developed the previously defined concept, seeking to leave all the installations on show with no false ceilings. We also sought to make everything tectonic and slightly primitive. This involved continuing the previous arguments.

CONSTRUCTION. 2007-2010

The construction process is extremely complex, having started with a long archaeological dig and continuing with all the excavation and work involved in undergrounding the cinemas, a difficult task because the site is set in a former medieval lagoon.

A building is always the expression of intelligence and a sustained will, brought to bear on a specific place. We cannot abandon the project to its fate. We have to accompany it until the idea, converted into matter and space, starts living its life. Then, we disappear; the building no longer belongs to us.

Josep Lluís Mateo,  2009

Site: El Raval, Barcelona
Surface: 7.000 m2
Client: ICIC (Institut Català de les Indústries Culturals)

External colaborators:
Structural Engineering: OMA, Agustí Obiol
Installations Engineering: Grupo JG
Budget: Aumedes-Embuena - Xavier Aumedes
Fire Protection: Francesc Labastida

[[title]] First Prize. Restricted competition.
2004-2007 – Barcelona

Location: Cornellà
Surface area: 15.000 m2 offices, 32.255 m2 car park
Author: Josep Lluís Mateo

External colaborators:
Structural Concept: BOMA, Agustí Obiol
Technical Installations: Grupo JG
Fire Protection: Francesc Labastida
Landscaping: Manuel Colominas

MEDITERRANEAN PATIO

Emphasis on the climate, changing the role of the Northern European lobby (air conditioned) for that of the Mediterranean courtyard, protected from the sun and naturally ventilating, was a core argument in this project. Then the reaction to a setting of mainly picturesque buildings in the global corporate architecture strain explains the dryness and extreme hardness of the exterior.

 Photos: Pedro Pegenaute

Filmoteca de Catalunya, coming soon from Josep Lluis Mateo on Vimeo.
Video: Tiago Camara

VIDEO-CHAT Paris, Boulogne from Josep Lluis Mateo on Vimeo.
Video: Tiago Camara

[[title]]First Prize. Restricted competition.
2006-2010 – Paris

“How to build a closed street block using various disconnected pieces was the first question we had to address.

The general composition, a score to be played by others, envisaged empty spaces between blocks, like great windows onto the empty green centre, and volumes with different responsibilities: one established the corner; another, taller and long, constituted the front that overlooks the large boulevard; others, pivoting on the corner, defined the sides.

We then have to build part of this idea. We continue with the great linear office block in keeping with our studies into the expressive capacity of concrete structural walls and the standard typological conditions of contemporary office space”. 

Josep Lluís Mateo, 2008

Site: Boulogne-Billancourt
Author: Josep Lluís Mateo
Client: VINCI Immobilier d’entreprise / NEXITY Entreprises
External colaborators:
Structural and Installations Engineering: SNC Lavalin
Quality Control: VERITAS
Fire protection: EURO Coord
Energetic Control: COTEBA Environnement
MAP colaborators:
Competition leader: Vicky Daroca
Project Leader: Laurent Baudelot