Magén Arquitectos took advantage of the bareness of the site and used it as a clean slate. Local materials and light were the main ingredients for the design of this building. Rectangular forms, semi transparent, punctured or solid are composed linking three floors accommodating meeting spaces, administration areas, tourism office among other. A minimal white or wooden interior compliments the austere white exterior with its alabaster detailing.

‘The site is located on the outskirts of Hijar, capital of the county, along the national highway N-232 and the old abandoned silo. It was a dysfunctional urban environment, including existing industrial buildings, and the front of residential townhouses, just across the road.
The absence of urban qualities in the environment legitimizes a certain autonomous condition of the building, rising from the land to form a unified solution, clear and compact. Therefore, the necessary link of building and place, reinforced by its institutional character, not articulated from urban relationships with the immediate environment, but from references to geographical landscape, history and culture, present in their external configuration. The group of carved volumes on local materials -stone and alabaster, alludes, in an abstract and geometric way, to stone groups that occur in quarries in the area. The stone surfaces, opaque or translucent, exhibit materials and expressive features of alabaster in relation to the day or night lighting.
The ordered group volumes in the outside, compact, heavy and massive, is poured inside. The space pierces and perforates the solid volume, producing a dynamic system of voids, connected visually and spatially, diagonally, linking the three floors and articulating the circulation spaces, access and meeting. The continuity with the outside material and the presence of natural light into the interior through various gaps, strengthen the condition of the interior space as empty excavated, drawn from the section as a fundamental tool of the project.’

ARCHITECT: Magén Arquitectos, Zaragoza, Spain. DEVELOPER: Bajo Martin County. LOCATION: Bajo Martín County, Híjar, Teruel province, Aragón, Spain. DESCRIPTION: Institutional. STATUS: completed. AREA: 1.286,10 sqm. DESIGN: Magén Arquitectos (Jaime Magén, Francisco Javier Magén). COLLABORATING ARCHITECTS: Beatriz Olona, María Tejel. QUANTITY SURVEYOR: José Luis Sánchez. ENGINEER: Rafael González. STRUCTURE: José Sainz. CONTRACTOR: Conavinsa SA. Grupo Praínsa. DATE: 2011. No part of this web site may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of Morfae and the copyright owner.