BIGMAT INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE AWARD
FINALIST SPAIN
Renovation and Extension of Ramos Carrión Theatre MGM Arquitectos
Project title Renovation and Extension of Ramos Carrión Theatre Location Zamora, Spain Year 2016 Office MGM Arquitectos Authors José Morales Sánchez, architect Juan González Mariscal, architect Collaborators Ángel Fernández Poyo, site management architect Francisco Fuentes Vicario, quantity surveyor José María Romero, structure designer Francisco Duarte, structure designer JG Ingenieros, installations engineering CHEMTROL, scénic equipment Higini Arau, Acoustic consultant Stole, Theatrical consultant Type of work Public Photographs Jesús Granada and Hisao Suzuki
Our society is more accustomed to dense space than empty space, to rubbing shoulders and crossing paths with other people than the loneliness of empty spaces. Contemporary space is, by nature, dense, motley, full of diverse events and activities. This idea of dense space has had major implications for the architectural project. The interior of our architecture is not dominated by composition but by the need to reconcile a diversity of functions, contradictory desires and multiple experiences. This has resulted in the idea of a project that is enriched by the need to work on a space that is constantly watched by people, in which a diversity of programs coexist. Historic towns have a multitude of spaces, shaped into unique places by the succession of events, where architectures press against each other, making them interesting in their own right. These spaces could be interpreted as rooms if we could imagine them with roofs. The theatre is strategically located on a garden-platform overlooking the Douro river, and was shored up by several constructions. The goal of the initiative was to think of a public space as a place where the party wall of a building, the walls of a house, the dividing wall of a theatre and the material presence of a city wall could all be seen. A city is made of conflicting times. This becomes obvious when we work on our architectural heritage. In this case, the existing building (the former Ramos Carrión Theatre) had to be shored up by other architectures. These ‘wedges’ consist of a pavilion, which will furnish the entrance square, a large ramp that connects the surrounding streets and buildings, and a garden overlooking the Douro River. Finally, the major work of architecture is a roof that accompanies every movement of the audience, between Castile’s predominantly cloudy sky and the earth. This means experiencing it as an ‘unfinished’ object, with the main auditorium escaping, leaking into the space behind it and on its sides. Five years after the competition, the project was given an additional extension that plays with this equivocation, projecting a single continuous space carved into the ground and dissolved into its roof, once again ambiguous in its definition of what is open and closed.
INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE AWARD NATIONAL FIRST PRIZE INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE AWARD FIRSTFINALIST PRIZE BELGIUM 159 SPAIN SPAIN 159 159
