Intempo
Intempo is a 47-floor, 187-metre-high skyscraper in Benidorm, Spain. The design of the building was officially presented on 19 January 2006 and work began in 2007. Originally scheduled for completion in 2009, work was significantly hampered by the economic crisis of 2008 which seriously affected the real estate sector in Spain. Construction was almost completed in March 2014, but the sponsor undertaking the project went into bankruptcy. In 2018, the building was acquired by SVP Global, and was fully finished by mid-2021.
The building is the tallest in Benidorm and the fifth tallest in Spain.
Project
In 2005 a 92-million-euro loan was obtained from Caixa Bank to begin the tower's construction. The building's inauguration was initially scheduled for 2009, then rescheduled to 2011.The building project was initiated by the developer Olga Urbana, and the design was the work of the Alicante-based architecture firm Pérez-Guerras. The building plans were presented in 2006, and construction began in 2007. At that time, Spain was experiencing a real estate bubble, and completion was initially projected for mid-2010. However, due to the onset of the financial crisis and the emergence of numerous problems, both financial and technical, it was delayed for several years. Furthermore, several aspects of the initial design underwent modifications due to a lack of foresight, the innovative structural elements, and the complexity of the project. The structure was finally completed in March 2012.
The original developer entered administration in 2014. The majority creditor then became the Sociedad de Gestión de Activos Procedentes de la Reestructuración Bancaria, a public limited company managing assets from bank restructuring, or " bad bank," as the heir to the mortgage loan granted by the defunct savings bank Caixa Galicia. Sareb attempted to recover part of the loan through a full auction of the property after the developer's failed attempts to reach agreements with foreign investors. In April 2018, SVP Global officially acquired ownership of the property through a payment in kind of approximately €60 million. The developer resumed construction in the autumn of 2019 and it was completed in July 2021, fourteen years after it began.
The skyscraper is notable for its peculiar geometric configuration consisting of two parallel straight towers, joined together by an inverted cone with an elliptical base at a height of 150 meters. The structure's fundamental characteristic is its very high slenderness.
Building site
The building is located on Avenida de Colombia, in the Murtal district, an area colloquially and commonly known as Vía Parque. It is situated at an altitude of 35 meters above sea level and approximately 500 meters in a straight line from Poniente Beach, an area with a lower residential density than Levante Beach. The site occupied by Intempo is part of the urban development plan approved in the 1950s.Architecture
Design
The building, which houses a total of 256 apartments, consists of three basement levels plus 52 floors in two straight towers—separated by 20 meters—180 meters high above ground level, with a perimeter of 24.15 by 16.7 m. The towers are connected at both the first three floors and the top nine by an elliptical cone with its apex at the bottom, 30 meters high. This peculiar geometry at the top means that the floor areas of both towers decrease with height, as the floor areas of the cone increase.The towers' structure is made of reinforced concrete, with the side walls left exposed, interrupted only by a small window on each floor for bathroom ventilation. The front façade is a discontinuous glass curtain wall with golden tones. The façade underwent wind tunnel testing using a scale model and performed well, with the cone-shaped design effectively channeling the wind.
The plot on which the building stands is 12,879 m², of which the Intempo building occupies 6,442 m². The total built area is 36,223 m². The structure of the blocks contains 90 tons of rolled steel and 2,200 tons of corrugated steel. The concrete used in the towers amounts to 23,037 m³ and the floor slabs occupy an area of 43,000 m². The concrete used is capable of withstanding a maximum of 50 MPa in the foundation, in the walls and the supports up to the 15th floor slab, which is reduced to 40 or 30 MPa in the slabs of the upper floors. Due to the building's high slenderness ratio, the floor plan configuration of the apartments, and the small size of the vertical circulation cores, the overall rigidity or indestructibility is explained by both the cantilever effect and the frame effect, developed through the floor slabs, as well as by the stiffening belts located on the four upper technical floors. According to data from the study carried out by Florentino & Regalado, the cantilever effect contributes 50% to the structure's solidity, the frame effect 37%, and finally, the stiffening belts 13%.
Height
It is the tallest building in the city of Benidorm, the tallest in Spain outside Madrid, one of the tallest in the world in a city of less than 100,000 inhabitants, the tallest residential structure in Spain, and the tallest residential building in the European Union. Initially, the building's height was 187 meters above ground level but after its completion in 2021, a new floor slab was added, reaching a height of 202.50 m. This height is still pending approval by the CTBUH.Structure
The building consists of two parallel towers separated by a gap of and connected by a cone-shaped structure between floors 38 and 44. Its frontal view, vaguely resembling the number 11 and the letter M, has led commentators to speculate about a possible reference to the terrorist attacks of 11 March 2004 in Madrid. It is one of the few skyscrapers in the world which has the shape of an arch. The façade of the building is of glass, a first for a residential building in Benidorm.Preliminary designs
According to initial renderings of the building, a continuous curtain wall was planned for the front façade, but this idea was ultimately discarded, and transparent glass railings were installed on the terraces to leave them open. Similarly, the cone was originally intended to be a smooth, circular pyramid, but it was ultimately given a stepped configuration. Regarding the elevators, the architect's initial idea was to install a model that did not require a machine room, a common feature in 20-story buildings, but unfeasible for this skyscraper. This deficiency, noted by the construction company Kono, was remedied by adding an extra floor slab—number 56—consisting of two small coffers on either side to house the elevator machine room, which are not visible in the original plans or in the developer's promotional images.Facilities
From the 38th floor upwards, the features of the apartments will be adaptable to the owner's needs. Outside, it will have two swimming pools —one semi-Olympic and one for children— landscaped and recreational areas, a solarium, and sports facilities with a spa, gym, and sauna. The building has three basement levels with a total of 389 parking spaces, as well as storage rooms and lockers.The slight incline at the entrance is overcome by a staircase, with a row of palm trees on either side, and a small panoramic elevator. The building's apartments are accessible by a total of six elevators, three per tower. The elevators are capable of ascending from the third basement level to the 45th floor in 55 seconds, at a speed of 4.2 meters per second, making them the fastest in a residential development in Spain.
Elevators controversy
In August 2013, the US edition of the blog Gizmodo published the false claim that the building's architects had not taken into account the elevator shaft. The story was subsequently picked up by numerous media outlets, both national and international.The misunderstanding originated in a news article in the Spanish newspaper El País on July 20, 2013, which discussed the construction of the Intempo building, plagued by business and financial problems, and even accidents, against the backdrop of the Spanish real estate crisis. The article stated that "the elevator shaft had not been taken into account," referring to the space that houses the elevator machinery. This sentence is what triggered the whole thing.
The first media outlet to question the veracity of the news was the technology blog Microsiervos, providing, among other evidence, links to the building plans that clearly showed the shafts for the two elevators and the freight elevator for each tower, and even photos of the enormous elevator control panel found on the blog of a journalist who had climbed to the top of the building. The rumor was quickly denied by those responsible for the project, via Twitter and local radio, and even by Sareb.
History
The construction of the project was accompanied by numerous setbacks, which caused the opening date, initially planned for mid-2010 and with a construction period of 40 months, to be postponed several times. The project was presented on January 19, 2006, and construction work began on May 2, 2007.Origin of the design
The building was designed by the Alicante-based architecture studio Pérez-Guerras, with the collaboration of the Benidorm-based studio Olcina & Radúan Arquitectos and the concrete structure by Florentino Regalado & Asociados.Some sources, when the initial designs were presented, saw in the design a tribute to the victims of the March 11, 2004 attacks, known by the numeronym 11-M, as the towers could be interpreted as two facing ones forming the letter 'M'. The architect explained that it was not his intention to create a tribute, but that he "doesn't dislike the idea at all." He added that when he designed Intempo, "little had passed since the attack, and I was very aware of it because I entered a competition to build a monument in the same area as the attack, but I only received an honorable mention." Indeed, at the end of 2004, a few months after the attacks took place, the Pérez-Guerras architecture studio received a runner-up prize of 6,000 euros in the competition to design the monument in homage to the victims of 11-M located in front of the Atocha station.