Pontevedra town hall offices | Nan arquitectos

Due to the pandemic installed in our country at the beginning of 2020, the decision was made by the municipal government to adapt its facilities to the new normal. As a consequence of this situation, it is intended, above all, to guarantee the safety of both workers and users outside the facilities. In this way, we seek health solutions that minimize the impact of the virus on the relationships and procedures that will be carried out within the city council. To do this, we try to find the best design and technical options.
An example of this is forced ventilation to prevent the virus from staying in space as much as possible. Thus we generate a false metal ceiling where we locate the ventilation and air conditioning installations.
On the other hand, we try to use materials that are easy to clean, without ornamentation that makes maintenance difficult. These materials are also seeking the comfort of all users, which is why acoustic attenuators have been used in the ceiling to minimize reverberation. In general, we have looked for cold and neutral materials to give a technological image to the project but at the same time counteracting this effect with the combination of wood to humanize environments such as workstations or waiting rooms and meeting spaces.
Through design we optimize circulations and rooms where safety distances are the greatest possible. We separate the traffic circulations from those of stay creating a new entrance and some booths that act as a filter to receive people. Thus, there is an entrance, by appointment, in the census and registration area and another transit entrance to the municipal offices located on the upper floors of the building.
In the customer service areas, we seek that visitors turn their backs to avoid contagion risks. For the workers we have created work spaces or boxes where they are completely closed and protected by screens while they are seated but facilitating that they can communicate with each other and with the citizens who come to carry out their procedures.
Regarding the concept, the basic idea is to create a series of boxes that contain functions. On the one hand, the work boxes and on the other, the sentry boxes. The roof at different levels, supported by large concrete pillars, also resemble open boxes. The space itself is, in short, a set of boxes that dialogue with each other and that are juxtaposed in a way that creates different environments that help us to generate circulations and spaces of separation. These habitats or their generation are favored by the volume of the continent.