The Banco Urquijo complex was built in Barcelona between 1967 and 1973 by Jose A. Coderch.
The isolation is ordered around a central axis, on the side of which symmetrically the six buildings are located, approaching the neighborhood with an alternative distribution solution to the settlement rules of the upper part of the city. This axis is underlined by the presence of two ramps at the extremes leading to the underlying level; each of the bodies has a pertinence space both at the planimetric level and at the top through the uniqueness of the volumes. The planimetric solution demonstrates the will to confront urban space through a sort of isolation on the part of the roads. The volumes of the buildings disconnect from each other by comparing with free ground and closed traffic; the "privacy" of this space over the city and its surroundings, is exalted by the green that fills it and orders it. The theme of the relationship between road map and city shape is solved through the structuring of a single stand, which recovers the available batch of wire and becomes a sort of great mediation element of the city.
At the eye, the residential complex appears as a series of solids with a large metric weight and the articulation of the prospects seems to be obtained through a sort of excavation in matter; Right-angle geometric cuts pinch the original volume, resulting in small balconies that alternate with glazed windows and shaded by wooden shingles; in these buildings seems to prevail a horizontality obtained by the offsetting of parallel planes between them. Plant research and depth-of-work by working on staggered planes allow the architect to avoid creating interior patios, thus keeping the compactness of the blocks.
The organization of the interior presents the living room through two opposite terraces, one on the road and one on the inside. The environments are protected from the outside by fixed or open-leaf grilles, made up of triangular sectional vertical wooden frames, fixed with screws on an iron box.
In the years following the Banco Urquijo construction, a second Coderch project was also launched: Las Cocheras.
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