Craft architecture. Gijón Old School of Commerce renovation by Ruiz+Nicieza

Description of project by Ruiz + Nicieza Arquitectos

The project aims to rehabilitate the Building of the architect Manuel del Busto (1911) for its use as a municipal documentation center and as the headquarters of different cultural associations.

It is the first building in the city of Gijón resolved with a metal structure and as in many other projects of the time it involved the integration of architecture with the artisan work of other disciplines in stained glass, tiles and other ornamental elements.

The multiple reforms and interventions suffered by the building over time required a previous job of cleaning and purifying layers.

The original program developed on ground and first floor the spaces for teaching; leaving the second floor, with independent access, for administrative units and residence of the School staff. This spatial organization has its evident reflection in the composition of the elevations, where the large windows of the two main floors contrast with the scale of those corresponding to the administration-dwellings. All this solved exquisitely in the modernist style of the time.

The plan is developed from a double axis of symmetry that divides it into four quadrants, with classrooms located in the corners and auxiliary spaces and vertical communication in the axes.

Inside the large central hallways are manifested as meeting and recreation spaces between the classrooms, open to light on the north / south axis connected with a large staircase topped with a stained glass window of the old workshops of La Veneciana.

Successive interventions reformed from the main accesses and the stairs, to the classrooms or administrative spaces. In many of them the need to maintain the balance and lightness of constructive solutions, affecting the structure, limiting its use due to the added overloads was lost sight of.

The project recovers, in a respectful manner, the original compositional scheme, eliminating all those added that meant a limitation of use and an alteration in the reading of the original traces of the project. The work of cleaning and rehabilitation of all recoverable elements is defined, incorporating contemporary solutions, maintaining a rational balance between the existing and the added.

As for the program, the building is provided with a documentary archive space in a basement under the street. On the ground floor / access, more public spaces are concentrated, such as an auditorium and two multipurpose rooms and exhibitions. On 1st and 2nd floors, the old classrooms are adapted as administrative rooms for the different associations, reserving the central east-west axis to incorporate a new ladder for vertical connection and toilets. The plan under cover generated after the reform of the early 80's is used to implement the technical rooms of the facilities.