Alberto Campo Baeza

Transformative processes affecting walls – understood as processes of interpretation and reworking – have been underway for several millennia, appearing to be inherent to the very identity of masonry construction. The overall result of these long-term processes has been a gradual reduction in mass through increased porosity, particularly along the building’s perimeter. The drive of technological revolutions in the field of construction now faces the challenge of adapting to climate change, which raises new questions, the most pressing of which concern the building’s perimeter. Underpinning this work is a study that seeks to frame thickness as the defining characteristic of the wall, an inescapable quality of historical construction and one traceable to the very archetypes of the discipline. The text combines theoretical reflection with an analysis of a built structure: the headquarters of the Advisory Council of Castile and León in Zamora, designed by architect Alberto Campo Baeza, considered paradigmatic for the methodological issues it raises and the verification of the connection and coherence between design and construction