CARLOS LAMELA

ARCHITECTURE MADRID AWARD Jury Member

Innovative Architect, Environmental Advocate, and Academic Leader.

Carlos Lamela (Madrid, 1957), superior architect by the Superior Technical School of Architecture of Madrid in 1981 and "designer" by the UIA of Florence (Italy) in 1984. His entire professional career has been developed in the architecture firm Estudio Lamela , an office founded by his father Antonio Lamela in 1954, and of which he is currently the executive president and owner. Within his work, it is worth noting the recognition achieved by his proposals for large civil facilities such as airports and football stadiums, awarded by international critics for their excellence. Sustainability has been another of the pillars in the trajectory of the Spanish architect. He has worked as a professor at the Polytechnic School of Milan and has given various lectures at Cornell and Harvard Universities. He has been president of the Spanish chapter of the Urban Land Institute. Worth noting are the Remodeling of the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, the New Son Moix Stadium (1994-1996) in Mallorca with a capacity for 26,000 spectators; airports such as the New Terminals T4 and T4S of the Madrid-Barajas Airport7 (1997-2006) or in Poland, Terminal A of the Warsaw Airport17 (2000-2015). Sports cities such as the New Sports City of Real Madrid in Valdebebas (Madrid, 2002-2005) or the Remodeling of the New Terminal of the Gran Canaria Airport (2006-2014). Hotels and shopping centers such as GALERÍAS CANALEJAS (Fourseasons Madrid); or buildings such as Torre Astro in (Belgium, Brussels) or in Qatar New 40-story Marina Mix 004 office tower in Lusail and the seven underground stations of the Light Railway Train (LRT) also in the City of Lusail, next to Doha . In Mexico, the Corporate Contact Center for Banco Santander in Querétaro18 stands out, with 2,000 telephone positions and 2,000 parking spaces; remodeling and expansion of the Tijuana Airport Terminal for more than three million passengers, the complex of the Maranta residential towers in Mexico City, and other residential buildings in Querétaro.

CENTRAL CAMPUS OFFICES FOR AIRBUS DEFENSE & SPACE

The project’s main idea is the creation of a series of enhancements with a similar aesthetic and coherence with the concept of a “campus” where each building is independent with its own procedure. To the client’s wishes, the project aims to develop and complete all the buildings at the same time.
The enhancements which the project comprises are, firstly, the Identification Building, strategically situated by the property’s entrance. Its function is the control and accreditation of all the employees and visitors of the Campus. Secondly, the Canteen Building, which will also serve the North Factory, has been designed to be as functional as possible, giving ample and comfortable space for eating. Thirdly, the Campus has two office buildings: Central offices and Information Management where large departments have been designed to favor letting natural light into the work areas, concentrating services and areas that don’t require much natural light in a more central zone. Lastly, the Campus has been equipped with a parking lot in an area called “P7” all set on a “Project of Urbanization Works” that collects, organizes, and reinforces the concept of “campus” that the client seeks while creating an attractive environment to work.
One of the objectives of the Central Campus Offices project is to obtain environmental credentials that guarantee its design excellence. Specifically, it aims to achieve BREEAM Very Good.

T4 MADIRD-BARAJAS AIRPORT

The Terminal 4 of the Madrid-Barajas Airport is one of the most iconic constructions of the world of architecture of the last decades.
The NAT (T4) at the International Madrid-Barajas Airport is located three kilometres north of the old Barajas terminals TI, T2 and T3. The original design concept has been maintained in the new building and replies to the complex and extensive requirements of the specification, organising activity within three buildings:
A car park measuring 310,000 sq m, with capacity for 9,000 spaces.
A Terminal Building is separated from the car park by forecourts, which act as a transport exchange for buses, taxis, metro, trains and private vehicles. It serve international flights and Shengen flights (flights within European Union countries). With nearly 500,000 sq m (distributed over 6 levels), it has 174 check-in counters, 38 stands for planes and airport walkways located in the boarding pier that measuring 1.2 Km long.
The Satellite Building, located between the new runways (2 km from the main terminal building), houses all international non-Shengen flights from the NAT. There is also a flexible area which serve all flight routes: non-Shengen, international, national and Shengen (complementing the terminal building). The building is almost 300,000 sq m and 26 stands for airplanes.
The car park building is composed of six modules functionally independent but that appear as one unit by means of exterior cladding and a garden roof of 56,000 sq m. Direct access to the car park from the road is made through one of the six guarded level-crossings, where every vehicle is automatically issued a car park space. From the car park the terminal building is entered by means of a connecting pedestrian walkway. Both buildings, the car park and the terminal, are separated by the forecourts. The forecourts are made of a series of roads and aprons at different levels, all covered by the extension of the wavy roof of the Terminal.
The Terminal Building hosts three lineal modules (Check-in spine, Processing spine, Pier), and serves different functions according to the passengers flow (arrivals or departures). Reception of passengers, check-in counters, control and boarding for departure flights; disembark, luggage collection and departure of passengers from the building for arrival flights.
These modules are separated from each other by light-filled canyons that provide natural illumination to the lower levels of the building. This contributes to the environmental strategy – reducing the energy consumption. In addition, this also reduces the maintenance and upkeep costs. In these spaces, the vertical movement of passengers takes place, via stairs, ramps or lifts. These are a very important element for the orientation of the passenger as they indicate the sequence of actions that the passenger needs to carry out when arriving or departing.
The Terminal and Satellite buildings are separated due to aeronautical reasons such as the location and size of the landing and take off runways (existing and new). The two buildings are connected by a tunnel that runs under the runways. The tunnel has two floors with three voids in each. The upper level has two side areas of approximately 10 metres width for the circulation of authorised vehicles and a central space of 13 metres, where the Automatic People Mover (APM). The lower section, with three spaces of identical dimensions, is totally devoted to the automatic baggage handling system (SATE).
Regardless of the type of flight, all the passengers who use the NAT Barajas have to go through the Terminal building as all checking-in and luggage collection are concentrated in here. The use of the APM systems (lifts, escalators and travelators) together with SATE allows the simultaneous movement of both, luggage and passengers. In this way the Satellite building is mainly reserved for the security controls of the international flights and for the boarding/disembark of this kind of flight. There is direct access to the Satellite from the exterior roads but it is reserved for authorised staff, not for airport users.
The New Barajas have a total figure of 70,000 passengers per year, including terminals T1, T2 and T3, with the possibility to move 18,000 in the rush hour. Despite the size of the project, the design of the NAT Barajas offers a functional and comfortable area for the passenger, an urban and architectural space with human scale both externally and internally and a harmony with the surroundings, minimising the environmental impact.

CENTRO CANALEJAS MADRID

The Canalejas Operation is one of the most significant urban development projects undertaken in Europe in recent times. It encompasses the restoration of seven historic buildings, two of them from the end of the nineteenth century, which were merged as a result of the different bank mergers and that were in disuse for 15 years, ever since the movement of the financial center to the outskirts of the city. The objective of the project is to create a complex with different uses: a luxury hotel operated by the Four Seasons chain with 200 rooms, an exclusive retail area of 15,000 m2, 22 luxury homes and a parking garage for 400 spaces. The criterion that governs the project is to respect everything that has historical or artistic value in the original buildings. Thus, the facades and the first bays of two of the oldest buildings will be conserved and restored, as well as various elements of the interior: skylights, metalwork, wood joinery, etc. All this will be repositioned and integrated into the building in its final state, contributing an added value to the new grouping. The geometry that serves as the basis for the overall development of the project is a classical, radial geometry with an axis of symmetry in the bisector that shapes the building on Alcalá 14 and that extends to the rest of the buildings. The creation of a large inner courtyard for ventilation and natural lighting to all floors is planned, along with another one of asmaller size intended to illuminate certain areas of the hotel, such as the spa. The construction of three new floors set back in part of the building is proposed, replacing the existing penthouses in the different buildings with new facades that respect the individual architectural composition of each of the buildings, in order to maintain the identity of each one of them, minimize the visual impact of the intervention and preserve the original urban scale. The consideration of the roof as a fifth facade seeks the integration of the same within the urban fabric of the city, as well as the incorporation of green areas that provide vegetation to the Central Zone of Madrid.

JOHN DEERE HEADQUARTERS

A construction defined by its U-form that redeems the memories of the courtyard buildings of the Spanish culture, defines the headquarters of the agricultural machinery company John Deere.
The geometry of the U-shaped building is an attempt to evoke the buildings with courtyards of Spanish culture, in which everything revolves around one function, in this case the agricultural machinery products of John Deere. It is closed to the outside — to the city and the road — showing its more public façade and suggesting movement with its roof and non-orthogonal façade plans. About the U-shape (outside-inside) there are also three levels of approximation: a distant one, that of the city, another intermediate one, that of the movement of vehicles, and a third level (the one closest to the building) which is framed by the geometry of the paving and the emerging volumetry of the structure itself.