During the period between 1990 and 2005, Touza Arquitectos carried out several interventions for the multinational pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (then known as GlaxoWellcome), both in its headquarters in Tres Cantos, and in its industrial complex in Aranda de Duero. Among them, the automated and digitised warehouse, pioneer of its time, stands out as being one of the first in Spain with such characteristics and of such magnitude. The project was carried out between 1994 and 1997. It involved a warehouse of extraordinary dimensions, the size of a tower, lying on its side: approximately 140m long, 25m high and 20m wide, with a volume of around 70,000m3. It is in this main warehouse that all materials converge in a fully automated manner, with a capacity for nine thousand pallets. An exterior metallic structural system was designed, like an “exoskeleton” with a lightweight curved roof, and a double-layer sandwich panel façade.

For the calculation of the installations, the outstanding participation of Aguilera Ingenieros was relied upon, which designed a sophisticated climate control system that maintains the ideal temperature at which the products must be stored. Another two warehouses store smaller handling units that are connected to the automated warehouse in which they are located and that manage the products being processed. The automated pharmaceutical logistics system consisted of eight different production lines that are interconnected. The structural system, and in particular the foundations, also required meticulous processing because, at that time, the digital automated systems did not tolerate much structural movement as any excessive structural deformation could lead to a malfunction of the automated system. Sag in piled foundation slabs was limited to below one centimetre, despite the large surface areas and the distances between supports.