The project to expand the headquarters of the European Community Patent and Trademark Office located on the outskirts of the city of Alicante includes the construction of new office buildings with capacity for 500 employees, a Congress Center —which includes an auditorium with capacity for 450 spectators—, and a new Reception and Welcome Building in charge of articulating the previous buildings in the new complex, as well as the integral urbanization of the entire new Campus.

The choice of the office model is fundamentally conditioned by two requirements: the need for high flexibility that allows adaptation to the changing needs of the Agency; and, on the other hand, to integrate a concept of diversity, enabling the creation of different areas within a relationship of continuity. To this end, a building defined by two 12.50-meter wide pieces, connected by a garden facing the sea, is proposed. The walkways that connect the two pieces take on special importance as places of relationship, of exchange, intended to promote informal encounters between the different areas.

The Reception and Welcome Building is conceived as a backdrop that gathers the volumes that make up the current access, building a new façade —continuous and fragmented at the same time— that welcomes the visitor with a clear gesture of embrace. Of variable height, it presents its largest scale in the entrance area, where a deep overhang announces the entrance to the building. The Congress Center is located below ground level and has been designed to allow natural light into the more public areas.

The built garden proposes the arrangement of plant masses to control the wind and introduce visual and physical barriers in the areas that required it, while the chromatic garden combines species with different flowering periods to emphasize their mutability, thus redounding in a certain idea of lightness against the strong presence of the existing architecture.