Quaderns 2011 - 2016 » Preservat al Buit

Roldán + Berengué, arch: El Pinar Community Center

blogquaderns — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:50:47 +0000

The community center “El Pinar de Rubí” is located on a 60-meter long plot, east-west oriented and having a strong cross-slope of 52%. The lower façade, near the C-1413-A junction, is located at an elevation of + 181. The opposite façade, on a plateau at + 189, is the end of a forest that forms part of Rubi’s Archeological and Natural Heritage Catalogue. The building is 75% partially buried against a retaining wall that supports the base of the mountain.

The project, which extends over the whole plot, has in plan and section the shape of a butterfly.

On the left wing, which has two stories, there is an auditorium, and above it, a nursery for the neighborhood children.

On the right wing, distributed among three stories, there is a small gym, classrooms for adults, the exhibition area and the social premises.

From across the road, the building appears as a solid rock built from concrete with stones projecting different scales of gray along with ash colored perforated and corrugated metal sheets, while the single story façade facing the forest is a transparent and permeable body.

The pillars supporting the roof in the generously spaced areas are painted in such a manner as portraying the trees outside.

Visually, between the buildings two wings, colored in white tones and with the help of a small three story curtain wall, we find the permeability point between the lower and upper bounds of the terrain, becoming the link between the “upper” and “lower” doors.

This empty, double height space is occupied by the stairs and elevators, working as a connection between the left and right blocks. The outcome is a reproduction in image and function of the small, steep path that existed at the site prior to the construction of the community center.

Architects: José Miguel Roldán y Mercè Berengué (Roldán + Berengué, arqts.)

Site: C-1413 Road, Rubí, Barcelona

Consultant: Structural: Bernúz-Fernández, Arquitectes, S.L., Mechanical: Julián Passardi (ae-t Ingeniería – Tecnioracle, S.L.) i Joan Escanelles (PGI Grup), Quality and quantity surveyor: Xavier Badia (Vinclament S.L.P.)

Collaborators: Vicenç Sanz, Isis Campos, Rosa Hereu · Juanjo P. Jarque, architects.

Area: plot: 758m2 buit: 1716,06 m2

Budget: 3.425.033,50 € PEC

Photography: Jordi Surroca

CAVAA arquitectes: reconsidering a modernist house

blogquaderns — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 08:15:25 +0000

In 1925, the Valls-Feliu family bought a detached single family town-house in Sabadell. The architect Joaquim Manich was responsible for the refurbishment. Since then, several generations of the family have shared the house and modified their rooms and spaces, as needed.

Nowadays, a new generation has moved in and the house has been reorganized according to them. A small apartment on the top floor and a 3-level house have been arranged. The new distribution empty the center of the building, to incorporate two stairways; a main staircase to provide access to the attic and another one inside the 3-level house that becomes the core of the new house. This staircase is designed to communicate, store, define spaces and allow visual from and through it.

Overall, the project involves an intervention where new objects are differentiated from the old ones, encouraging the contrast between them and revitalizing some who had fallen into oblivion.

Author: Oriol Vañó

Collaborator: Lluïsa Morao

Consultants: David Codinach, structural, Ildefons Valls, quality surveyor.

Area: 393 m²

Budget: private.

Photography: Do-Allo Estudi.

Jaume Terés: Leandre Cristòfol school of arts

blogquaderns — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 14:03:59 +0000

Sant Pau’s church building is composed of different structural units according to the spacial needs and which are the result of different interventions in the building throughout the years.
The adaptation of the existing typology according to the applicable regulations of the educational uses, the constructive and structural characteristics of the building, the poor architectural quality and the building new urban relationships with its surrounding area (PERI Palma Fanalets square) strongly recommend an intervention of replacement.
The new building is formed from the interaction of the formal and spatial elements that configure the place historical memory with the new requirements and the demands of contemporary language.
The means of access to the church from La Palma Street, and the facade of Sant Doménec Street are maintained, and the interior space is reinterpreted. These elements mix together with the new architecture looking for a balance between the building and the resulting new open area due to the change in the alignment of La Palma Street.
The full-empty ratio of the skin of the building indicates the relationship of indoor space with public space. Openings are concentrated and positioned strategically in order to get sunlight and to enjoy the new visual relationships provided by urban changes.
The maximum ratio between the indoor and public space occurs in the upper corner of the new area of Sant Pau Street, where the front “folds” capturing public space and setting up the main access to the facility.
Relating to the spatial requirements of the new school, the flexibility of the interior spaces allowing different options and developments of artistic activity, the obtention of linked spaces, new overviews and the maximum use of natural light and crossed ventilation have been dealt with.
The limits of indoor use are solved containing permanent uses, and its texture and colour allow the architecture to be the background for the students’ activities and their artistic production.
Fragmentation, verticality and filtered natural light are aesthetic qualities inherent in the Historical Centre we wanted to interpret.

Author: Jaume Terés

Work directors: Jaume Terés, Miquel Àngel Sala (BOMA)

Consultants: Structural: BOMA, Quality surveyor: ACSA Obres i Infraestructures, SA.

Collaborators: Sílvia Forns, Rubén Aragüés, Jordi Cestero (BOMA)

Area: 2694,75 M2

D2 arquitectura: Removal of architectural barriers in Volta Tecleta

blogquaderns — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 08:24:34 +0000

The space where the project was developed belongs to the foundation vault of the Forum Provincial Romà. It was a narrow space and uncomfortable for visitors who wished to contemplate the exposed pieces. The room is called La Volta de La Tecleta and it also had an accessibility handicap; the access to the room was located in a lower level than the public toilets and the only way of arriving was by a stair.

The commission was to solve this accessibility handicap and at the same time, improve the space in order to create a new exhibition atmosphere.

We designed an illuminated socle that shows the foundation level of the vault and it goes on to the ramp showing that the vault continues. The illuminating level is the same as the original floor level of the vault. The lighting system let us programme several scenes, according to the requirements and the needs of saving energy of the museum

They also asked us to design a store for the use of the museum staff. We did this by projecting a perspective end with illuminated glass, where we relocated La Tecleta, and in this way we also highlighted its importance in the room

The glass wall doesn’t touch the existing stone walls and leaves a space and along with its own lighting also highlights the length of the vault.

From the other side to the ramp, the socle is like a banister which then open out to the podiums where the Romans pieces are exposed, illuminated by raking light in order to be able to observe the texts written on the stones

Both in the podiums and in the socle we have available space with back lighting in order to be able to write whatever is necessary.

The introduction of white as a main color makes a contrast with the new and the already existing parts without being too loud and without affecting its historical importance.

Authors : D2arquitectura, Asuncion Vidal Layel- Manuel Pérez Saavedra

Collaborators: Arquitecte Tècnic: Antoni Curull Ceron

Site: Museu d’Història, Plaça del rei, núm 1, Tarragona

Area: 247,85 m2

Budget: 161.579,37 € PEM

Photography: Carles Balsells Olivé

Exe arquitectura: Social facilities at Roses

blogquaderns — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 12:59:24 +0000

The building is located in the historic center of Roses, where once stood Ca l’Anita (estanc de la punta). Highlights of the site are the open views towards the promenade and the sea, in contrast to the narrow streets perpendicular to the sea. The building sits in between these two types of plot.

The building volume is defined as a solid body, with a void on the ground floor, which oxygenates the Street San Isidre, while leading the views to the sea. This void creates a ground floor porch where the main entrance is located.

Inside the building, the plant is divided into two strips: the one with common spaces throughout the building length, which distributes traffic between all the spaces, with large openings and distant views towards the sea, and the classrooms strip, with openings of a more appropriate scale for an old town, respecting the environment and protecting the privacy of neighboring homes and classrooms.

The ventilated facade is finished with perforated panels that form the same original geometric pattern mosaic covering the floor of the old house. With the placement of these plates we wanted to put all the emphasis in the past of the site where stands the new building and witness the former existence of the popular shop of Anita.

During the design and construction process, energy and environmental aspects of the building has been enhanced. The building has been designed following the parameters of the LEED energy certification, being one of the first cultural facilities in Spain involved in this process.

Project: Equipamiento Social Ca L’Anita- Estanc de la Punta en Roses

Authors: exe.arquitectura ( Jaume Valor + Elisabeth Sadurní + Marc Obradó )

Consultants: Etec (budget), Arquitècnics (mechanical), Bernuz-Fernandez (structural), Conrad Torras (graphic design), Green Living Projects (LEED consultant)

Collaborators: Laura Llimós, architect. Marc Abril, architect.

Area: 900 m2

Budget: 1.564.200,00€ PEC

Photography: Conrad Torras

Urtzi Grau: ‘Three replications of the German pavilion’

Ethel — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:38:06 +0000

Following the closure of the International Exposition of Barcelona in 1929, the future of the German Pavilion designed by Mies van der Rohe hung in the air. Initially a commercial solution was sought, but following the breakdown of negotiations with a local restaurateur interested in opening a restaurant, it was decided that the building would be dismantled. The fate of its remains is still uncertain today. We know that the chromed steel returned to Germany, the metallic structure was sold by weight in Barcelona and the foundations remained on the plot, covered by a garden of palm trees. Mies reused the structure of one of the Barcelona stools for a low table at his apartment in Chicago, his collaborator, Dr. Ruegenberg, converted one of the onyx panels into the desk of his house in Berlin, and Philip Johnson managed to get hold of one of the Barcelona chairs which can still be admired today at his Glass House in New Canaan.

Perhaps the scarcity of remains accelerated the urgency of its reconstruction. As early as 1957, Oriol Bohigas wrote to Mies to commission him to build the pavilion once more. The German architect accepted immediately, but the project never came to fruition, inaugurating a series of failed attempts that continued after his death: 1964, 1974, 1978, 1980, 1981…

Its material disappearance was not the only stumbling block. The pavilion existed as a series of images that had circulated in architectural publications, but most of the original plans were lost in the haste of Mies’s move from Germany to the United States. Furthermore, it was impossible to talk of any definitive documentation, given that the design and construction process had undergone numerous last-minute changes. In short, the few remaining original documents did not coincide with the photographs. Its reconstruction would require a twofold operation: reconstructing the materiality of the Repräsentationspavillon originally commissioned to Mies, and selecting those documents that would validate the decisions taken, in other words, constructing the pavilion’s history.

This was the case for the three reconstructions completed in 1986 in Barcelona (Ignasi de Solà-Morales, Cristian Cirici and Fernando Ramos), Madrid (Josep Quetglas) and Milan (OMA/Rem Koolhaas), to coincide with the centenary of Mies’s birth. Each of them led to a materialisation and was based on a selection of documents that was radically different, illustrating three histories of the Modern Movement that use the pavilion as a historiographic argument.

[…]

Keep on reading: Three replications of the German pavilion PDF

Editorial: ‘Vacuum-preserved*’

Ethel — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:16:00 +0000

“Every age cuts and pastes history to suit its own purposes; art always has an ax to grind…No “historic reconstruction” is ever really true to the original; there is neither the desire nor the courage to embrace another era’s taste. We keep what we like and discard what we don’t.”

Ada Louise Huxtable, ”The Joy of Architecture” (1978)

Character 1: Every age has a particular relationship with the architecture of the past. The distance between the age of what is built and the need to preserve it progressively diminishes.

Character 2: Intervening on existing architecture is an historical but also historiographic exercise. Not only because a document that captures and reflects an instant of the past is modified, but because the way in which it is modified operates directly on the way it will be understood in the future, the way it will be represented.

Character 1: To preserve, to act on what is past, is a way of retroactively building history, and thus calls for reflection on the limits of authenticity. On the other hand, what are the limits of preservation? Often while speaking of preservation we forget that the essence of what was already there is something that History usually takes for granted, a smell, an experience without which that particular universe cannot be reproduced completely.

Character 2: Preservation has served political and ideological interests. Who decides what should be respected or destroyed and how? Is preserving inventing history? What are the limits of reproduction? Should something be reconstructed after it has already disappeared? How long should a building last? Are replications, copies or simulacra legitimate?

Character 1: Traditionally, preservation has been understood as the crystallization of what exists. We preserve. Still, how can we preserve what is constantly changing, what is happening inside what is built, the use, in other words, authentic architecture?

*(Extemporaneous dialogue between two characters, one from 1876 and the other from 2011.)

Image: Brodsky & Utkin
Columbarium Habitabile, 1989-90
from “Projects portfolio, 1981-90″
35 etchings, ed. of 30
43″ x 31-3/4 (F)
Photo: D. James Dee
Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York / www.feldmangallery.com

This issue

mario — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:06:48 +0000

VISUAL ESSAY
Ricardo Leite

EDITORIAL
P07 Vacuum-Preserved

AGENDA
P09 Is it worth continuing to spend money on maintaining the Plaça dels Països Catalans? — Josep Fuses i Comalada
P10 Casa Planells — Arturo Frediani

1 ESSAY X 4 CASES
P13 Preservation, Ideology and Culture. Pep Avilés
P17 Haunch of Venison Gallery. Haworth Tompkins
P23 Theaterraum Zuoz. Corinna Menn
P27 Cal Massó Art Centre. Tapias + Salvadó
P33 The Unfinished House. Pau Faus and Claudio Astudillo

ARCHIVE  Quaderns #25, 1956
Adolf Florensa i Ferrer “La restauración de edificios antiguos”, pp. 129-134
P38 Authenticity and Illusion in the Preservation of Heritage. Joan Ganau Casas

SUPPLEMENT #1
P42 Supplement to OMA’s Preservation Manifesto. Jorge Otero-Pailos

4 ESSAYS X 1 CASE

Monjuïc. Photographs by Adrià Cañameras

P55 Montjuïc: a Stage-set for Memory. Manel Guàrdia i Josep Maria Garcia-Fuentes
P59 Three Replications of the German Pavilion. Urtzi Grau
P65 Two Strolls through the Poble Espanyol. Stella Rahola
P69 The Life Force of Grey Goo. Stéphane Degoutin

OBSERVATORY

SUPPLEMENT #2: Interview
P81 Museum of Ruins. Isidoro Valcárcel Medina

GUEST
P84 Growing Old Disgracefully: Buildings, Preservation and Time. Charles Holland

* Photo: Haunch of Venison. Haworth Tompkins (Philip Vile)