Authors’ Comment
The site, located in Ștefăneștii de Jos, a town north of Bucharest, close to the A3 highway, is located in an area that is expected to develop in the future as an industrial and commercial territory. Until now, all the land in the surrounding area has been used for agricultural production, more specifically for growing rapeseed and wheat, so our intervention is the first of its kind over a very large area.
The building represents the headquarters of the Aragon group of companies, a Romanian contractor specializing in terrazzo flooring, and includes a combination of complementary functions which are characteristic of this type of program: a space for interaction with clients - a showroom for samples of terrazzo flooring and products, an office area, storage, laboratory, production spaces, changing rooms, and a covered parking area.
The atypical proportion of the site was a deciding factor in the overall configuration of the building, which has a width to depth ratio of approximately 1/10. Thus, a linear development of the future architectural object was practically inevitable. Taking into account this particularity of the site, a series of functions were consequently organized for the processes of display, storage and production.
Another important landmark drawn from the analysis of the context turned out to be the Bucharest - Ploiești highway, which, despite the fact that it does not constitute an access to the site, represents, through its proximity, a significant point of visibility over the building. This aspect suggested the possibility of working with the facades in an almost graphic manner, but using the oversized lettering as an architectural, volumetric element, to provide a visibility of the company names towards the highway.
Approximately two months a year, between April and May, the fields surrounding the land, cultivated in large areas with rapeseed, bloom spectacularly with bright yellow flowers. This image struck us on initial contact with the site and influenced our decision to use the same color for most of the building's bulk. The color and texture of the plowed, very dark gray earth also serves as an inspiration for the chromatic color of the facades. We like to imagine that in the future, when the surroundings will inevitably be built, the image of the building will remain as a memory of the blooming fields of rapeseed.
The linear spatial configuration of the building is obtained by repeating 20 times, at a 6m spacing, a prefabricated steel frame with a span of 18 m and a clear height of 6.20 m. This organization allows for the existence of mezzanines or floors, necessary for office, dining room or workshop areas. The three double-height double-height hatches on the ground floor serve as covered parking.
The facades are organized in three horizontal registers, which emphasizes the particularity of this building - its length. From a construction point of view, the ventilated facades are designed in a system of pre-painted metal structural cassettes. For the dark gray base register, 100/60 cm panels of via rustik - a granite aggregate material currently used for flooring - are used. The middle register is made of yellow corrugated sheet panels, a backdrop for the volumetric metal lettering. The upper part is finished with vertical strips of pre-painted sheet metal, triangular in cross-section. The first floor windows are marked in the same manner, but with perforated sheet metal.