The project strategy focuses on emptying the interior part of the building and employing the free buildable area in a taller, superimposed volume that creates a balanced triangulation with the two tall emblematic towers on the other sides of the square, Torre Madrid, and Edificio España.

The courtyard acts as a core around which the rooms are arranged. The staggered volumetrics are broken down so that they can relate to the buildings on Río Street, adapting to the shape of Madrid’s historic district. On the Plaza de España frontage, the building is divided into two parts. The lower one is aligned with the height of the adjoining buildings, while the top one is recessed and separated, creating a void that projects a sense of lightness and flotation.

The intensive use of granite on the facade is due to a desire for a respectful integration with the city’s historic and monumental zone. Granite is also ideal for giving shape, mass, and thickness to its ornamental abstraction, with a resonance of the Doric column. This geometry is then reproduced in the curved glazing that forms the double skin of the voids, a heat and noise filter that alludes to the glazed arcades, shop windows, and proto-modern facades that flank the nearby Gran Vía.[+]