Magazine
Quaderns #245
BMW MOTOR MUNICH
(Spain)
AT THE OUTSET: THE CITY POINTER
At the new concessionaire for BMW Motor Munich, motoring-related elements are brought into play to activate the sensation of familiarity in observers and users. The motorway railing that the driver leaves eternally behind leaps, protests, resigns from its post and leaves the roadside to become stylised as a referent in the façade. A fence of merchandised stainless steel slats is fixed to a metal tube structure at a distance from the building’s hermetic facing. This separation releases it from certain constructional obligations and gives it the necessary freedom of action according to communication and reference needs. A second fence with an austere flbrocement finish is responsible for providing a suitable solution to the most basic conditions of habitability and use. It is well known that those who devote themselves to such essential activities usually go unnoticed.
Here there is no attempt to prove the rule. However, the part that looks out can be a mask, it can be a bumper that challenges the cars filing into Sabadell. But it is also a kind of pointer, now not of the building but of the entire city. The concessionaire is situated at one of the entrances to the city, on a very busy road visible from the expressway linking Barcelona and the Valles Occidental. The invisible descent route of the small planes that land at the airfield in Sabadell adds the finishing touch to make its location remarkably strategic. Having been born in this context, there is no alternative but to accept certain responsibilities to the city, a degree of commitment. It’s normal. As the concessionaire of luxury vehicles that it is, it is evidently in its interests to advertise its activity to potential clients. But its prime strategic position, at the entrance to the city, leads it to aspire to a
more committed status, to establish itself as a new entrance referent, landmark, place of reference.
It is a pretension that is half arrogant, half committed. It has come to terms with its forceful presence in terms of size and commercial intentions, but it takes into account its involvement with urban construction. Behind this pointer comes the entire city. The same strategy that aims to create a degree of complicity between the building and the imaginary from which it arises must awaken us from our usual bored gaze and alert us to the presence of the city, make us ask ourselves: what is that? It’s BMW, and the need to situate it, to know where we are. And what’s that? It’s Sabadell.