This renovation is the first phase of a more ambitious project to generate facilities of greater dimensions and complexity, composed of two other buildings that also need to be restored, and which provide access to the Encomienda building and the current offices.
Description of project by José Juan Barba
The project is a complete renovation of the interior of an old neoclassical building from the mid-nineteenth century. Of the building, only the outer shell, a facade structure, and portico in neo-Tuscan style are preserved since in the '70s reforms were carried out that destroyed the entire interior. After some years without use, its function as a Town Hall was recovered.
The intervention is articulated around very few materials and two pieces proposed in the project: a red curtain and the new staircase. With these two pieces the guidelines of the intervention are set, the space is defined by the flow of visions and changing movements that will later produce its visitors and not as a response to the formalization of the walls, which is only circumstantial. The perception of both pieces depends on movement: in the case of the staircase its perception is only understandable by walking it, going up, down and penetrating it from the elevator, its flows vary not only according to the program it responds to but also because of its evident exposure to the changing light from the east and west; and in the case of the curtain because its position depends on its transit through the rails, keeping it open or closed, the visions towards the interior or exterior allow a different perception.
The curtain is designed employing two memories, the most evident is a translation of one of the most unknown pieces of Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion, his red curtain, always running over the access wall, with a height of 3.00 m. Its current location in the Barcelona pavilion has made its initial function disappear; it is located at the beginning of all the routes, which makes the visitor ignore the shadows of the wall where the curtain is protected and is thrown towards the clarity of the courtyard-pond where the sculpture of Georg Kolbe is located. A reference built also thanks to the work of Narelle Jubelin, «And Hence Re-Written».
The second memory, and the one that gives it meaning, refers to the mythical Penelope weaving and unweaving her cloth as a metaphor for the changing narratives of history. The curtain envelops a meeting space, a space of decision-making by the Local Government Board, a space of contradictions and impossible attempts to achieve a coherent sense of the life of the city. With the curtain, the space becomes a place.
The mobility of the curtain makes it opaque and transparent, becoming an image of the decisions taken there. The place it embraces becomes solemn when it is impermeable and friendly when, after being drawn back, it allows a view between the two facades of the building.
The second piece that articulates the project is the staircase. It is not a staircase with a continuous layout; the openings through which it develops change according to the transits made by its visitors and which are intentionally intended to activate. The walls, or the absence of them, surround it in its ascending or descending transit while reflecting the places that are intended to be connected.
At present, until the development of the rest of the project, the contact with the staircase is through the access floor, at this point, the staircase is surrounded by thick white walls and offers two possibilities: the descent on the left or the ascent on the right.
Descending about 5 meters, one reaches the new excavated floor where the connecting corridors with the Encomienda building and the current office building are located. The space strips the original load-bearing stone walls, which are articulated with the staircase railing, in glass and steel, and with its wooden floor. The staircase flooring, made of butt-jointed pieces of wood to reduce erosion, gives continuity to this path, which from this floor is sinuously ascending.
The ascent allows to move and stick to the wall to enter the rest of the reform, first to the fully glazed main floor where the red curtain room and the rest of the main rooms (mayor's office, secretariat, offices, office-landscape...) are located. On this floor, the floor has been unified with a continuous pavement executed in a yellow-green micro-terrazzo. On the top floor, area of the historical archive and research area, the stairwell is closed on the right side on the ascent and is permeable on the left side through some interior balconies that turn towards it.
This reform is the first action or phase of a more ambitious project to generate larger and more complex facilities, composed of two other buildings that also need to be restored, all linked by a tunnel, corridor, courtyard, and walkway that bridge the different slopes of the complex, and give access to the aforementioned buildings of the Encomienda and the current offices.
