The City Hall in Lalín, Galicia, designed by Emilio Tuñón Álvarez and Luis Moreno García-Mansilla and built by FCC, has won in the civil symbol category at the Twelfth Architecture and Urban Planning Biennial.

The Twelfth Spanish Architecture and Urban Planning Biennial is a set of awards offered by the Spanish Ministry of Development through its Directorate-General of Architecture, Housing and Land, in cooperation with the High Council of Associations of Architects of Spain, the Caja de Arquitectos Foundation and the Union of City-Planning Groups and Architects.

This year the candidates —projects done between 2011 and 2012 in Spain or abroad— numbered 583. A total of 15 projects received awards and another 27 made it to the finalist stage.

FCC’s winning project involved the construction of a new administrative building for the Lalín City Council. The defining note for the entire project is the cylinder, which appears both outside (in the greenish glass walls) and inside (where reinforced-concrete compartment dividers create circular functional cells of different sizes). In fact, the building has earned itself the soubriquet of ‘The Technological Castro’, in allusion to the round buildings in pre-Roman fortified settlements in northern Spain.

The entire building is designed as an open, permeable structure with multiple entrances from different points. It is coordinated with the open spaces around it, such as the large circular courtyard that lies south of the plot.

The building contains 8,140 square metres of floor space, 6,360 above ground and 1,780 below. The core holds two above-ground floors and a basement, and from it springs an annex with an additional four storeys.

Four staircases and three elevators, all cylindrical, provide the means for moving from one vertical plane to another.

The City Hall holds the City Council’s offices plus the local police station, regional government offices, exhibit halls and the local radio station.