At just 21,400 souls, Manlleu, Spain, may seem like a sleepy sort of place, but it has in fact grown enormously this past quarter century. Immigration, much of it from the Maghreb, has increased the town’s population by 22 percent. More people inevitably means more police, which is why the Catalan town, 50 miles north of Barcelona, recently completed a new station for its local force. Located on its northern edge, where land is more readily available, Manlleu’s $2.3 million facility is the work of Barcelona-based Josep Ferrando Architecture (JFA), which won the 2023 design competition with a mass-timber project offering compactness, adaptability, and rapid on-site construction. Faced with rather disparate surroundings—loosely scattered social housing and open fields—the studio imagined a building that reflects both its urban and rural contexts.

A long rectangle in plan, the 7,000-square-foot police station divides its functions into four parallel strips. Lined up along the northeastern facade, public areas, meeting rooms, and two one-person cells look out across the fields toward nearby hills. Running alongside them are bathrooms, technical areas, and other spaces that do not require direct daylight. Then comes a top-lit spinal corridor, stretching down the entire length of the building, while the fourth strip contains offices, which look onto a staff parking lot protected by a tall metal fence. Toward the northwestern end, a small basement contains changing rooms, lockers, and showers, and mechanical equipment.

Produced in Pamplona, 200 miles away, the fir-wood frame comprises serried rows of slender columns carrying perimeter beams, and thicker, more widely spaced columns carrying longitudinal beams on either side of the corridor. In the absence of transversal members, corner cross bracing stiffens the structure against wind load, its resistance engineered to carry a second story should extension one day prove necessary. In the meantime, a clerestory lights the corridor, its sloping roof fitted with a solar array.

For the building’s envelope, JFA imagined timber sandwich panels carrying windows, except at the southeastern corner, where floor-to-ceiling glass signals the public entrance. Concerned about security, particularly the risk that attackers might try to ram a car into the structure, the police asked the firm to modify its plans and clad the station in metal. In collaboration with the manufacturer, JFA developed sandwich units featuring varnished particle board on the inside and aluminum on the outside, perforated wherever there are windows and finished in a soft olive green.

The result is a closed box by day, while at night the lighted interior becomes visible from outside. At the building’s rear, in a nod to nearby agricultural installations, the fence enclosing the parking area is made from galvanized steel, and incorporates kennels for police dogs in one corner. The public entrance, in contrast, appears much more urban, with a small planted piazza in front and a cantilevered canopy.

Two features in particular underline the civic nature of this building: on the one hand its low concrete plinth, with steps and a ramp for access, and on the other a free-standing metal tower, which signals its presence in the landscape. Solid at the bottom, the tower’s metal cladding becomes ever more perforated as it rises, producing a subtle effect of dematerialization that is highlighted at night by internal lighting. Prolonging the tower toward the sky, a lightning rod guards the police station from the wrath of the heavens.