The works on BAI’s future headquarters are making significant progress in Pamplona and have entered a particularly important phase for understanding the building’s architectural character: the incorporation of the timber structure inside. This new step makes it possible to begin to understand more clearly the construction logic of the project, conceived through a dialogue between three different structural systems. The intervention works with an existing industrial building and transforms it through a strategy that combines reinforcement, extension and spatial updating.

The building brings together the reinforced concrete of the existing columns and beams, the steel structure linked to the reinforcement of the existing tie rods and trusses, and the timber of the new interior structures and extensions. Three materials and three ways of working with structure come together in a single project to respond to the needs of the future centre.

The appearance of timber marks a key moment in the construction process. Its presence introduces a new material scale into the interior and makes it possible to see how the building is beginning to move from the phase of structural consolidation towards a stage more closely connected to its future activity. BAI’s headquarters will not simply be a container for training, technological and research programmes. Its own construction expresses many of the questions that the institute places at the centre of its work: how to intervene in existing buildings, how to integrate diverse construction systems, and how to design spaces prepared for new forms of learning, experimentation and transfer.

The coexistence of concrete, steel and timber offers a precise reading of the building’s character. Reinforced concrete preserves the structural memory of the industrial buildings and ensures the continuity of the pre-existing structure. Steel reinforces and stabilises the existing elements, allowing the structure to be adapted to the new requirements of the project. Timber introduces new spatial and construction solutions, linked to the extensions and to the interior configuration of the future centre.

This understanding between systems makes the construction site an example that is especially coherent with BAI’s mission. The future headquarters is set to become a reference space for industrialisation, robotisation and innovation applied to construction. For this reason, the construction process itself takes on pedagogical and demonstrative value. As the works progress, the building begins to reveal its condition as an infrastructure open to knowledge, testing and collaboration between sector stakeholders. The incorporation of timber makes it possible to imagine more clearly the spaces that will host BAI’s training, research and technological activity, as well as its role in transforming construction from Navarra.

The future headquarters is not limited to refurbishing an existing structure. It proposes a new reading of that pre-existence and connects it with systems capable of expanding its possibilities. This operation reveals one of the key ideas of the project: building the future from what already exists, incorporating new material, technical and programmatic layers. With this new step, BAI’s headquarters is beginning to reveal its architectural identity: a building where concrete, steel and timber work together to create a space prepared to think about, train for and promote the construction of the future.