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CaixaForum Sevilla Cultural Center

By : Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra Arquitecto

GRANDS PRIX DU DESIGN – 14e édition

Discipline : Architecture

Categories : Public Building / Cultural Building : Award of the Year Winner

CaixaForum represents the potential of fighting against difficulty, against (pre-existing) constraints. It is built mainly inside a prevailing concrete skeleton that was meant to be an underground parking area.
The project coherently resolves two crucial issues when dealing with existing buildings: accommodating the new uses and making them visible (even being underground).
The first issue is approached by placing a set of fairly autonomous volumes inside the given grid, looking for a pacific coexistence: two exhibition rooms, an auditorium and cultural workshops. These new volumes are accommodated to the available space without being dominated by the existing structure. Visibility is provided by an exterior canopy that covers the access systems and receives all visitors’ flows: a public space, a small covered plaza.
The project conceives the superposition of two worlds: an inner world, excavated, solved with a Cartesian, orthogonal architecture, an architecture made to last forever, to remain.
The exterior world is represented by a canopy that responds to the contingences, to the limitations, to the bonds and constrictions: this architecture gives response to the willingness of an era and to contemporary sensitivity.
Both worlds are connected by a vertical channel of natural light. The canopy captures the sunlight and brings it to the underground hall by a great skylight that filters the light through a porous envelope made of aluminium foam.

Collaboration

Engineering : Edartec Consultores

Engineering : JG Ingenieros

Acoustics : Arau Acustica

Scenography : Edartec Consultores

Graphic Designer : GD Consulting

General Contractor : Estrada Design

Dragados S.A.

The project in images