New BBVA Headquarters by Herzog & de Meuron in Madrid

“La Vela”, the new BBVA Headquarters by Herzog & De Meuron in Madrid

In November 2015 the last employees will move out of the iconographic building located on Paseo de la Castellana 81, built by the Architect Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza in the years 1978-1981 as the headquarters of the Spanish bank Banco d Bilbao, merged later into the multinational Spanish banking group BBVA (Banco de Bilbao y Vizcaya Argentaria).

Just before the crisis the BBVA management decided to sell their most emblematic buildings in town to GMP in order to centralise their operations with all administrative personnel (6.000 in total) in a new campus located in “Las Tablas”, a new urban development on the Northern periphery of Madrid.

After a restricted competition, won by the Swiss Architects Herzog & de Meuron and 5 years of construction, the new building-complex of 114.000 m2 is going to be completed in the next two months. It consists of a sequence of office buildings made out of concrete and glass with green streets in between, leading to a big central courtyard with a 93 meter high oval tower, the new icon of the BBVA headquarters called “La Vela” (what means either “the candle” or “the sail”). The whole compound is closed to the outside by specially shaped brise-soleil filtering the sunlight and the sight into the office spaces.

Once occupied by the different areas of the banking company the new BBVA headquarters by Herzog & de Meuron in Madrid can be visited and will be included in the architecture-tours of MADRIDES.

Text by Werner Durrer, MADRIDES

 

For more information please visit our Destination MADRID