Today we would like to tell you, if you don’t know already, that 2016 is a special year to us, as we celebrate no more and no less than 10 years! It’s been a decade since Joaquin Perez-Goicoechea and Nasser B. Abulhasan laid the first stone of this architecture studio.

Over the course of this decade, we have known success and we have also lived together through rough times in our industry; we have worked hard and we have had fun, but above all we have learned from each other. Looking back, times, places, and… people, many people, who have helped us get here come to our mind. Thanks to all of these people and the collective effort, we have developed more than 300 projects.

From our beginnings when we were mostly focused on luxury single-family housing we have evolved and gradually we have been addressing many different typologies of projects: hospitals, health centers, offices, religious buildings, collective housing and institutional buildings. Our aim is to highlight some of our most significant projects within each of these typologies.

Luxury single-family homes

As examples of luxury single-family homes, we would like to mention two: Star House, for being our first major work, and the recently completed Wall House, the first comprehensive project, including not only architecture but also interior design.

Star House is one of those houses in which we have intended to establish sustainable criteria for Kuwait’s arid climate. To optimize climate control and energy efficiency, it is protected to the south by being in contact with the desert, by an almost gapless wall; while to the north it draws upon the existing slope to open to the sea. It is a house that blends with the environment by being partially buried.

Wall House implies an interior space of freedom development that remains out of the stranger eyes behind a shell – the wall – that protects everything. The most intimate rooms and terraces are places where the courtyards disembogue; around them, three daughters and a mother develop their lives, so it remain partially interconnected, that is to say, flights create shadows on terraces and gardens, interrupting the visual connection and enabling the growth of vegetation across the different levels.

Vertical Housing

For its complexity, we would like to talk as a vertical house, about Wafra Living, an L-shaped building whose main goals are: firstly, that the complex interior gets ample natural light; secondly, that the community privacy is more than guaranteed; and thirdly, creating common indoor and outdoor spaces. Thus, the building combines different levels for the domestic and collective, private and public scales. While the cuts of the front building improve the view of the lower floor apartments in the back tower and part of the ground floor level is attached to a retail facilities area, a high square serves as a community space to develop leisure activities or practice sports; also the veil of the façade hides some service areas.

Governmenta and Institutional buildings

As institutional building, we refer to our project for GDIS, General Department of Information System. It aims to be an iconic building representing Kuwait Government. It also tries to reconcile the concepts of accessibility to citizens, innovation, technology and transparency with stability, strength and safety. It is a light volume elevated from the ground floor as podium that opens to the public at three points in response to the three types of users: employees, VIP guests and visitors. Regular visitors and VIP guests enter the building from the main façade, through one of the large arches that separates the two flows of users. A big mouth receives them at the main entrance; the only drilling that exists is a defensive perimeter wall. In the upper floors slats with variable geometries, protect the office areas from the sunlight incidence, and it allows to be perceived as a bright, transparent and accessible element from the distance.

Hospital Architecture

Also in Kuwait, we find the health center to which we want to refer: the Hisham A. Alsager Cardiac Center. This building aims to change the perception of the hospital to something positive so that it becomes a place where patients can effectively be healed from a holistic perspective; therefore, the exterior is far from the usual façades for such constructions and is closer to the socio-cultural endowments inviting the user to enter by using two red large openings in the façade. Its configuration generates two concentric rings for separate circulation of patients and medical staff. On the façade that provides access, a setting on the ground floor allows to welcome the patient in a shaded outdoor space.

Offices

Among other projects in Spain, in the offices typology, we have the renovated ones for the independent television producer, Prointel. In addition to the adjustment to new uses and purposes of today’s television, a creative overhaul of corporate identity representation was made. But the most important part was undoubtedly, open the offices to a patio that became an integral part of the building users’ daily life, as a way to take advantage of the natural light and to create a highly flexible and multifunctional space.

Among other projects in Spain, in the offices typology, we have the renovated ones for the independent television producer, Prointel. In addition to the adjustment to new uses and purposes of today’s television, a creative overhaul of corporate identity representation was made. But the most important part was undoubtedly, open the offices to a patio that became an integral part of the building users’ daily life, as a way to take advantage of the natural light and to create a highly flexible and multifunctional space.

Religious architecture

Finally, also built in Spain, the Sevillian “La Ascensión del Señor” church thanks to which we were nominated for the Mies Van Der Rohe award.

In this project we sought to overcome some of the community needs with a new endowment that would serve as a meeting point and a place for introspection