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Cabin in Aguilafuente

This small pavilion hosts only one room that fulfills the desire of its owners to sleep at the level of an orchard and under a skylight to see the sky of Aguilafuente. The building is an extension to the original house from the 17th century, included in the heritage protection catalogue, which encloses a rural orchard, and it is attached as part of the party wall between a hazelnut tree and a magnolia tree. The connection is made through a light metallic porch that cares the vegetation and that also solves the paths, shading and protection from the rain. The pavilion is a compact volume with a pitched roof that incorporates the skylight in its highest part and that is integrated in continuity to the porch to become a gutter that pours the water to a nearby well where the bathroom space opens. The construction refers to the construction system of the rural tradition of Segovia, with its updating to modern systems of timber prefabrication and its dark green colour seeks integration with the wall and with the orchard and garden.

We present our idea of freespace through imaginary solids of the interior spaces of 6 buildings of cultural scope which have a public service for the user. We carry out the analysis of these freespaces through their three-dimensional representation as autonomous solids. Implicit in them we encounter their relationship with light, time or sound, agents that become fundamental tools in the design of each project and that condition the relationships of adjacency and closeness that are produced between the various objects that contain them. In two dimensions, space is expressed and represented by the section. The precision of the section, as the abstract document that it is, does not guarantee to know how the space will be perceived, but to inform by means of the dimensions of the space (the height, the depth and the width) of its quality before the surprise of the real constructed phenomena.

The X BIAU exhibition at the Triennale aims to express the diversity of situations that architecture faces in a vast territory that brings together twenty-two countries on two continents and 660 million people, conditioned by the “DISPLACEMENTS” and movements of those who migrate from the rural peripheries to the magnetic urban centres and others that end with the abandonment of the cities. These “DISPLACEMENTS” are proposed in the exhibition, without walls nor borders, beyond the Ibero-American territory in order to express an open and common landscape. A lightweight zig-zag modular structure, located on the axis of the hall, shows the awarded works in light boxes as well as catalogues and newspapers of the Biennial that can be picked up freely by the visitors. Each work has an open catalogue on lecterns showing its technical data. The light in the room is intended to be low in order to emphasize the light boxes in the central element guiding the visitor around. A set of textile panels with “graffiti” hand drawings by Souto de Moura, this edition Ibero-American Prize, lead to a video with a conversation between Mendes da Rocha and Souto de Moura, moderated by Carrilho da Graça, at the X BIAU opening in São Paulo.

Oropesa is known for its castle, built in 1402 as the residence for a noble family from Toledo, who undertook the construction of an unfinished aerial connection between the castle and the “Nuestra Señora de la Asunción” church. The structure is supported by arches and walls that cut across the city, and in which these houses are embedded. The houses were small, with many divisions, and in ruins. They had two shared courtyards behind one of the facades, with wide brick arches crossing them. The project opens a long, narrow courtyard/crack, which defines two asymmetrical houses on either side, built for two siblings. The roofs were dismantled and rebuilt a meter higher, reusing the clay roof tiles. The two structures are linked together by the two powerful brick arches, which are protected as historical monuments.

Six large existing mulberry trees placed in Ausias March Park determined the volume of the UPI school that does not alter the Park’s layout. It respects the position of six mulberry trees, arranging the classrooms around them and shaping a central lobed courtyard. This courtyard is the core of this experimental school, linking open spaces, covered areas and indoor rooms. The classrooms are displayed linked to the patio, where a circular sand pit and a bench are placed for outdoor games. White coloured ceramic builds both facades and roof. From the outside, the building intends to be a light, white ceramic facade where the shade of the nearby trees is reflected and the building exhibits a sober and continuous image, as a sort of palisade, that avoids building up fences.

The new Library in Ceuta, located on the north coast of Africa, is conditioned by the steep topography of the plot and by the Marinid archaeological excavation of the XIV century that determines the interior spaces of the Library. The orthogonal geometry of this ancient settlement is turned from that of the actual urban grid. This fact establishes a triangular geometry for the structure over the archaeological site and the urban value of the Arab city is included in the geometry of the new building. The Library is conceived as a compact volume that preserves the archaeological area as the core of the public spaces, creating a sense of openness and transparency where groups of hanging triangular lamps with peaks in both geometries are set over the archaeological centre. A concrete plied basement runs along the steep streets and the façade is wrapped up in a light aluminium-perforated skin that reduces glare and solar gain, as a veil, and protects the inside from the harsh Strait winds.

The Library is located in a privileged site, an urban park in Cordoba on the border of a wide avenue that covers the railway network. It builds up the continuity with the garden visually linked to the large trees and on its opposite side the main façade is a continuous and precise lattice facing the city, building the park’s limit with the avenue. This three-dimensional aluminum lattice screen unifies views and lights and lends a serene and abstract image towards the avenue. The trapezoidal plan adapts to the historic layout of the 18th century Agriculture Gardens, respecting the existing trees unfolding its height from the traffic road to the park. The pavilion image of the Library towards the park is lightened by a balcony that extends the reading spaces to the garden between the tops of the trees and thus introduces the vision of the green landscape inside.

The display of the programme for this Police Station in Seville in a star shaped plan, as a panoptic, has determined the image of the building. As high-rise dwelling buildings surround the building, it’s representative image towards the city is intended by means of a horizontal and extended volume that does note seem to touch the ground. A continuous suspended wall made of white concrete wraps the perimeter of the building. In this way, the glass is sheltered from the harsh sunlight with different depths for the different orientations. The programme is organized in the four peaks of the star with the public areas all of them provided with natural light though the long and shaded facade. A patio-lightwell, built with blue ceramics, crosses vertically the two levels of the building. The lower one hosts the internal areas that are partially built underground and surrounded by a green slope that borders the star shaped volume.

The headquarter of the National Bank of Spain in Plaza Cibeles appears to be a building invariable in time, nevertheless it is continuously renewed by various interventions, sometime strict works of restoration and other by modifications in spaces and uses to emphasize the value of the protected building. In all these operations the main issue has been to unveil forgotten spaces and to restore the original ceiling heights occupied by intermediate stories and partitions. From the lecture of the historic original plans, interior spaces and qualities, unrecognizable in the last years, have been recovered and set in value by the architectonic interventions in order to adapt them to the current and changing needs of this institution. Apart of introducing a new architectural language, the constructive elements of the building have been restored, as the iron ceiling of the Basement, and the new spaces have also become exhibition areas for the Bank´s art collection, as the art work “Zona Euro” by Ignasi Aballí installed in the new staircase.