New Headquarters of Group Azahar

Azahar is a group of companies related to Sustainability and Environment, devoted to topics such as waste recycling, landscaping, plant cover, among others.

Located just northeast of Valencia, between the cities of Castellón and Benicàssim, the new Azahar Group Headquarters sits on the Spanish landscape like a white void. Designed by the Office of Architecture in Barcelona, the project features aesthetically flat building façades combined with a complex roof geometry influenced by the surrounding mountain landscape.

The project contemplates three actions: a building of corridors of 5 m repeated fifty times with a sloping deck, favoring the ventilation is cutting contour adjusting to the slope and increase the height as the gap and use of space (costumes, work area, machinery, warehouses, garages, etc.).

This angled deck, 250-metre long, receives treatment plant along its entire length, acting as a backdrop for the intervention. The second area will be formed by nurseries and plantation area, as well as a Garden center at the north end of the field. The administrative headquarters building is divided into two wings connected by a central body around two courtyards open, closing the distant landscape and establishing its own climate and relationship indoor / outdoor.

One of three architectural interventions occupying the site, the compound - complete with covered greenhouses, service buildings and the new headquarters - is littered with viewpoints that slowly draw the visitor towards the site's hidden valleys. Upon arrival you observe the structure slowly exposing itself, inviting you in through open patios carved into the centre of two major building wings. Like a cave within a mountain valley, the stark white building is pierced by a series of windows that connect the interior environment with exterior patios.

To achieve this distantly mute landscape, OAB used a 'flexible self-washing stucco, white in colour, that needs no further connections than those of the actual implementation of 2 to 3 mm'. The new waterproof material serves more than an aesthetic goal by allowing rainwater to be collected and used for plant nurseries that share the site. The ultimate architectural icon is intended to complement and to materialize the Azhara Group's environmental and artistic commitments.