Everyone who has ever built anything—a model, a birdhouse, or small pieces of furniture—has a clear sense of the amount of things that can go wrong during the construction process. A screw that is impossible to tighten fully, a warped wooden board, an inattention or a miscalculation that can frustrate plans instantly. When we transport these small inconveniences to a building scale, with countless processes and many different people involved, we know how complex a work can become and how many things can get out of control, taking more and more time and requiring more and more resources to finish. And when we talk about a building that needs to float, be completely self-sufficient, and, after fulfilling its useful life, be completely reused—could you imagine the technical challenges of building something like this?
Buildings have always been used to represent values. From the Gothic cathedrals of the Catholic Church to mirrored bank buildings, architecture can generate an atmosphere of power, confidence, grandeur, and more. For the design of the headquarters of the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) offices, a global knowledge center that supports countries, organizations, and companies with knowledge and consultancy in the area of climate change, the architecture must reflect concepts of resilience and sustainability. Fun and functional, the floating structure constitutes a key element in a recently remodeled port environment, providing public space at the water's edge—and even a swimming pool. In addition to the offices, the building also has public spaces, most notably a restaurant with a large outdoor terrace.
