Ciudad BBVA

Ciudad BBVA () is a complex of seven buildings that houses the current operational headquarters of the Spanish banking institution Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria. The main building, known as La Vela, stands in the center of the complex and is 93 meters tall and has 19 floors.


It is located in the Las Tablas neighborhood of Madrid and is accessible from the A-1 (Autovía del Norte) and the M-40 ring road.

Overview

It is a complex of eight horizontal buildings of three heights. Each of the horizontal buildings is named after a continent: Oceania, Asia, Antarctica, North America, Europe, Africa, South America and Zealandia. 

The streets that separate them are named after the seas and oceans that unite the continents: Pacific, Indian, Mediterranean, Atlantic and Caribbean streets. In the center is a circular plaza of 100 meters in diameter where the main building stands, an irregular elliptical tower called The Sail. It is a building of 93 meters high and 19 floors, with 82 meters in diameter and only 16 meters wide.

In order to achieve the sail shape, a total of 35 different radii of curvature were designed, distributed on the exterior of the 19 floors. The name was chosen among its employees through an ideas competition. The complex consists of a total of 114,000 square meters of office space and its construction cost approximately 620 million euros, although other sources put the final investment at 900 million.

Design

The complex was designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss architecture firm Herzog & De Meuron and earned LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), one of the world's most demanding sustainable building standards. 

In 2014, it received ISO 14001 environmental management certification. A double layer of two glass panes separated by argon gas was used for soundproofing against the exterior.

 References 

Category:BBVA

 Other websites