L’Éliana Mercedes Benz Leadership

This project provided a solution for a mixed-use building, seeking to adequately combine a commercial, administrative activity – car sales and management – with a more industrial activity – vehicle repair.

The building has three floors: a basement and two floors above ground, with a layout and external appearance which allow three clearly differentiated volumes to be identified:

A first volume with two storeys: basement and ground floor. On the ground floor, there is a showroom for new cars, while the basement floor contains a car park and second-hand car showroom. From outside, the volume takes the form of a prism, glazed on all four sides.

A middle volume with three storeys. The ground floor houses a reception, offices, spare parts storeroom and warehouse, while the first floor contains offices and a meeting room and the basement floor is used for private parking. This volume is also prismatic, although rather more compact than the previous block. Glazing is used on the lower part of the building around the entrance and the façade on the upper part is clad in high pressure laminate panels.

A third volume, also containing three floors, is home to a diagnostics room, maintenance workshop, service area for employees and private car park. Clad in prefabricated concrete slabs, the external appearance of the building is clean and homogeneous.

We attempted to create a rather unusual building in terms of form and composition, while remaining within urban development parameters. The use of a curtain wall in the showroom block, the ventilated façade clad in laminate panels in the administrative area and the use of prefabricated concrete on the workshop lend a certain formal purity and create a modern, timeless feel which allows the building to blend respectfully into its surroundings.

In compliance with municipal regulations, the construction covers less than 40% of the plot: the remaining land features a car park and landscaped areas.