Intervention for hotel & restaurant in the old Montalban Ceramics Factory

Intervention for hotel & restaurant in the old Montalban Ceramics Factory Location Calle Alfarería 21-23, 41010, Seville, Spain Architects AF6 Arquitectos Area 1.937m² Years 2013-2018 Case study for HTCA3 by Angeliki Touriki ETSA Sevilla, 2022

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

01 02

Location & relation with the urban tissue of Triana Modern history of ceramics in Triana & the Montalván family

RESTORATION & INTERVENTION

03 04 05 06

Style & scale of intervention | Ideology behind the project Ceramic facade Plans & Diagrams Photography

CONCLUSION

07 Personal opinion and analysis 08 References

01

Location & relation with the urban tissue of Triana

The case study is located in the district of Triana, a neighborhood in the west side of Seville, Andalucia, and it distances 350m from the famous Triana bridge (Puente de Isabel II).

It is important to relate the intervention with the dense and complex urban tissue of the city of Triana that holds a long history of the initial use of the studied building, the alfarerias.

Triana

Until the 20th century, Triana was the most important hub of pottery production in Andalusia and one of the most active in Spain. It is known that the vast majority of the tiles that we can find in the city of Seville are made in Triana and they can be seen placed with a devotional sense in public spaces, in windows, balconies, patios and walls of the streets, constituting a very characteristic element of the city.

aerial photo

archdaily.com

02

Modern history of ceramics in Triana & the Montalván family

The neighborhood of Triana is, par excellence, a pottery neighborhood since Roman times and includes one of the most artistic and industrial parts of the city.

Clay work has been an essential activity to explain the neighborhood since its origins, dating back to the Islamic period, around the 11th or 12th century.

In the early days of the muslim period, the potters settled mainly in the so-called "Barrio de los Alfareros", which would be located approximately in the area of Puerta Jerez and the south part of Avenida de la Constitución. However, due to the fact that the production of ceramics involves high emissions of noxious fumes (since it was necessary to operate ovens at high temperatures that generated a lot of smoke), when the rulers of the city began to increase their palatial residences in the Alcázar, they forced the transfer of these activities to more remote areas and it was generally usual for factories to be established outside of cities.

Around this time, the potters began to settle strongly in Triana, where in addition to more space, they had great availability of their raw material, a high quality clay offered by the river Guadalquivir at several of its points.

Precisely from the end of the 19th century and in the first decades of the 20th, a time of true splendor of Triana ceramics took place, linked -above all- to the spread of regionalism in architecture. This defended the use of formal and stylistic resources that were considered typical of the Sevillian and Andalusian tradition, for which elements considered to be of popular roots were mixed with others that had clear reminiscences of Mudejar, Renaissance or baroque. This regionalism would experience a definitive boost as a result of the decision to hold the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition in Seville. Not only the facilities intended to house it, but also many of the new works undertaken to improve the city, were made in this style. This circumstance led Triana workshops to work at full capacity, which is why many of the great headquarters of ceramic firms that have survived to this day correspond to this period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Mensaque in San Jacinto, Santa Ana in San Jorge or Montalván in Calle Alfarería, my case study.

Centro Ceramica de Triana

photos of the author walking the area

19-20th century

The old Montalván pottery factory is one of the three pottery ensembles that remain in the Triana neighborhood. It ceased its productive activity in 2012, constituting evidence of the crisis of the ceramic industry of Triana.

As far as its own history is concerned, although the initiator of the García-Montalván saga was D. Saturnino García-Montalván and Carmona, this Sevillian factory gained noticeable momentum from 1874 thanks to his son Francisco García-Montalvan Vera, who had been working with his father since 1850.

Later, his son Manuel García-Montalván García Montalván would join the family industry, who would take charge of the factory from 1901 and would give it even more fame and renown in the first half of the 20th century. In 1927, according to a project by the architect Juan Talavera Heredia, he would build the splendid house attached to the factory and on the corner of Calle Covadonga, in a regionalist style with magnificent tile work, both on its façade and in the main hall, which served as a permanent exhibition room. This house is number 21 on Calle Alfarería and the factory is currently number 23.

Nowadays, the ensemble is considered as part of the Patrimonio Histórico de Andalucía, described as a contemporary pottery. The rehabilitation of the building was able to reborn it while taking advantage of its own destruction and paying attention to the innovative process of the heritage intervention.

https://sevillaxm2.com/regionalismo-y-ceramica-en-triana/

21st century

03

Restoration & Intervention STYLE AND SCALE OF INTERVENTION | IDEOLOGY BEHIND THE PROJECT

The project comes from a slow documentation work that ends in a building created through recycling. It is not an old-new, past-present reflection, but a unique investigation of a particular place. A way of making architecture from contemporary guidelines and always based on detailed knowledge of the property, the objects, the matter that constitutes it and its cultural and anthropic situation. From the patrimonial investigation of the property, we arrive at a result that is the result of an exhaustive process, where all the ceramics that remained on the shelves of the old Montalván ceramics factory have been recycled to create an architecture that is absolutely imbricated in its context, where the material that constitutes the new work comes from the objects existing there before the performance. After the intervention, the industrial and colorful past of Triana ceramics is enjoyed from a contemporary point of view.

The building is discovered from within. The most innovative of this architecture is kept and guarded by a complex urban tissue, that of the suburb of Triana. The interesting thing here is that the buildings of the neighbourhood are a surprise to the visitor given the fact that someone has to enter to recognize the interiors of the plots, because people who pass through the streets of Triana often do not perceive what is actually there behind the doors and inside the buildings. And this is both what happens and what the architects aim to happen after the intervention too.

Inside there are three patios with different character. The restaurant corresponds to the spaces of the old Casa Montalván, the work of regionalist architect Juan Talavera y Heredia from 1927. It is an autonomous piece, forming the corner of the complex, but linked to the factory complex. The rest of the Pottery Complex is organized on the ground floor as a promenade between the ovens and warehouses of the old factory, giving access to the rooms located on the upper floors.

Pottery, its memory and its value in the current context, is the central issue of the project. The main goal of the architecture studio is that the visitors enjoy the heritage at any point and that they are able to interact with it. This idea materializes in the use of the production remains of the former factory of Cerámicas Montalván with a double meaning: as a contemporary architectural action aimed at intervening in the industrial heritage, and as an application of a basic principle of sustainability based on construction with the reuse of waste from the last productive memory of this place.

04

In 2013, when the architects took over the rehabilitation project -one year after the cessation of its productive activity- they found inside a huge residue of old ceramics that they wanted to upcycle and reuse. Luckily, they were given the freedom of creativity and time to experiment and work on it and after classifying and organizing the azulejos, they came up with the idea of this patchwork inner facade. In this way, the building is able to narrate its own history and at the same time to be an example of sustainability.

Also, the architects pursued the possibility of working with color and create this colourful ceramic mosaic.

What is really interesting about this part of the intervention is the personal implication of the architects in the design and practical process and the variety of scales examined. The different designs were elaborated before the beginning of the work. First, the tiles were classified according to compositional criteria, tonality, drawing and format.

Second, all the designs were photographed, one by one, the tiles were numbered, and they were kept. Finally, the tiles were placed in their final position during the last phase of the work.

CERAMIC FACADE

05

PLANS & DIAGRAMS

change of use OLD vs NEW “aprovechar su propio desecho para reconstruir”

“donde antes salía el humo, ahora entre la luz”

behind the facade, you never know what's hiding

KILNS PATIOS RESTAURANT

ground floor

06

PHOTOGRAPHY

07

Personal opinion & analysis

After a meticulous research about the work of the architects, the history behind Montalván and after two personal visits in the site of my case study, my opinion has been formed. I believe that the intervention in the patrimonio ended up being a success story for the neighbourhood of Triana, as it is about a contemporary design outcome based on a traditional -but also innovative- design method and process. I admire the way the architects worked on this, starting from point zero with no documentation and having to work with a physical model (maqueta) in order to really understand the scale.

Also, both for their personal implication with the project and the idea of recycling and reusing the majority of materials that were hiding inside the complex. In the end, it was created an architecture absolutely imbricated in its context and a beautiful aesthetic. A unique, non-standardized building has been made now, a work where the architect is absolutely necessary, essential for his creative proposal and carried out. Apart from that, a new relation behind heritage is proposed that is also visible in other works of them, as the Centro Ceramica, another one of my personal favorites in Triana.

08

References

COAS Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Sevilla (2021, 4 February). ‘SEVILLA EN PROCESO’ - AF6 ARQUITECTURA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD6nbqQNmys&list=WL&index=53&t=57s&ab_channel=COASColegioOficialdeArquitectosdeSevilla

LUIS SÁNCHEZ-MOLINÍ (2012, 4 September). “El cierre de Montalván evidencia la crisis de la industria cerámica trianera” https://www.diariodesevilla.es/sevilla/Montalvan-evidencia-industria-ceramica-trianera_0_621838361.html

Arquitecturas Cerámicas, AF6, Montalvan https://www.ceramicarchitectures.com/es/obras/hotel-conjunto-alfarero-montalvan/

Guia Digital del Patrimonio Cultural de Andalucía, “CERÁMICAS MONTALVAN” https://guiadigital.iaph.es/bien/inmueble/17201/sevilla/sevilla/ceramicas-montalvan

Cultura de Sevilla (2014, 29 June) “Crónicas urbanas: Centro Cerámica Triana” https://guiadigital.iaph.es/bien/inmueble/17201/sevilla/sevilla/ceramicas-montalvan

Hotel and Restaurant in the ancient Montalván Pottery Factory / AF6 Arquitectos https://www.archdaily.com/916166/hotel-and-restaurant-in-the-ancient-montalvan-pottery-factory-af6-arquitectos

Manuel Hellín (2021, 22 February). “LA CASA MONTALVÁN Y LA CERÁMICA EN TRIANA“ https://www.archdaily.com/916166/hotel-and-restaurant-in-the-ancient-montalvan-pottery-factory-af6-arquitectos

https://www.sevilla.org/actualidad/blog/patios-y-corrales-de-triana

https://sevillaxm2.com/regionalismo-y-ceramica-en-triana/