Gastronomic laboratory of the Todolí Citrus Fundació. Bartolí Lab by Carlos Salazar Arquitectos

Description of project by Carlos Salazar Arquitectos

Carlos Salazar builds and designs the kitchen that Adrià imagined for Vicent Todolí Entre naranjos.

In the town of Palmera –between Gandía and Oliva– in an enclave surrounded by orange groves we find the Todolí Citrus Funadació, where a complex and ambitious project is developed that encompasses culture, gastronomy, research and landscape conservation in a space that was born from the concern to preserve the environmental environment of Vicent Todolí's family home, threatened by the urbanizing maelstrom of a few decades ago and against which he responded by creating a Foundation in the form of a citrus collection, the largest in the world under the open sky, with about 400 different species acquired in recent years.

The Bartolí-Lab is a building designed as a kitchen and creative center for the Todolí Citrus Foundation. It is named after the rural section of the town of Palmera where the artistic curator Vicent Todolí has located his project. At its epicenter, the old tool house has given way to a light building, a small architectural gem. A “test tube” of the Valencian citrus landscape conceived as a gastronomic research space. A project by Carlos Salazar's studio that has had the collaboration of the great chef Ferrán Adrià.

A gastronomic laboratory where chefs could experiment with citrus and all the possibilities that its cultivation offers. Culinary research in the field ended up being combined, which means going to the orchard, tasting citrus fruits and starting to prepare dishes; with a question close to landscaping and the vindication of the rural environment from a new perspective.

In the exteriors and interiors of the kitchen laboratory, details such as the light structure that supports the assembly of the two cantilevered roof bodies, as well as the light permeability that is achieved with the skylights and the large openings in the walls, are perceived. The culinary equipment, moreover, is prepared for great mobility.

The understanding among the project stakeholders was immediate. It was about putting the accent on creativity, contributing some research and never looking for conventional solutions. Highlight the connection between culture, gastronomy, research with future values and a landscape to be conserved in a protected space - it cannot be built - where there was only a small pre-existence, is the one that was used to introduce an unusual building: a completely pavilion integrated into the garden.

The particularity of the project arose when approaching the design of an absolutely mobile kitchen that was both a laboratory and a dining room where the elements of that kitchen at a given moment can disappear - be saved to perform an act -, or even be removed for cooking outside. The result is a space whose requirements are to be able to work, cook, produce products related to citrus fruits, hold events, talks and be both an indoor and outdoor dining room. A very important aspect that has been taken into account in the strength of the natural light of the place. 

The laboratory building has large overhangs that soften the interior lighting environment and that on one side generates a porch where meals are made outside next to one of the citrus orchards. The construction has been carried out on an old warehouse that was in a very precarious state.

The final result is graceful, functional, bright, whose play of risky geometries causes a feeling close to organicism, which is enhanced by its harmonious presence in the center of the orchards. The construction has an undisguised Californian air, This laboratory assumes all those artistic qualities and also shows with subtlety the effectiveness of a structure of fine pillars, trusses, windows and enclosures that show us the values of a cultured architecture and recall the Californian balloon frame - frame trusses - with the large cantilevers of the Japanese pavilion architecture that provide a necessary shade outside and a gentle light inside.

And the product of that concern are citrus fruits, research, cuisine, culture and architecture translated into this specific pavilion in the middle of Valencian nature. A place of the future and experimentation.