In the same way, a historical structure is assumed in which the vault of the cloister corner stands out, inserting a contemporary reading in what would be a historical window of the Jaen municipality.
Presentation text by the architect Alberto Campo Baeza, below.
"The air is serene and clothed in beauty and unused light, Salinas, when divine music sounds, by your divine hand, governed."
Fray Luis de León.
I must confess by now that from the first moment the images of Pablo Millán's latest project in Porcuna have captivated me.
Some very white arches, with simple white ribbed vaults, on two floors, make up two sides of a beautiful patio in Porcuna. The other two sides are the ramparts or dividing walls that, intentionally painted white, are a perfect complement to our arcades and, if they fit, add more value to them.
Any architect immediately comes to mind the EUR of Rome, of the architects, Giovanni Guerrini, Ernesto Lapadula, and Mario Romano. Here more content and with proportions capable of removing us.
Giorgio de Chirico, the Italian surrealist painter, also comes to my memory, with his series "The enigma of the day" that some of us carry in our hearts.
But, above Romano and De Chirico, the work of the very young Sevillian architect Pablo Millán is of the highest order. And it transmits to us the spirit of that verse with which we began this writing. Serenity, beauty, light, divine music.
And, once again, the very accurate images of Javier Callejas.
Alberto Campo Baeza.
Description of project by Pablo Millán
Intervening in the historic city implies inserting a new order that allows to read all the preexistence in a logical way. The plot on which we work has all the conditions typical of a city environment with all the concentrated historical density. An important manor house that was demolished in the 1950s, left a significant urban void. This house in turn was heir to medieval structures attached to the wall and in turn inserted into the architecture of the Roman city of Obulco.
In this complex fabric of the city and almost like a dreamlike image by Giorgio de Chirico, we project a clean, stripped-down, essential architecture with large ambulatory as meeting places, and large open rooms that accommodate the program.
The project must assume the preexistence of rooms and give order to everything. It is developed in three phases of which only the first has been executed. In successive phases, the patio will be closed, which will give volume to this type of house with a centered patio. We assume a historical structure, the cloister corner vault, and as R. Moneo emphasizes in The Life of Buildings, through an orderly, rhythmic and silent repetition, we insert a contemporary reading in this historical window of the municipality.
The project chooses to insert an important geometry, a computer layout that allows at all times to bring balance to this great urban void plagued by messy backs and party walls.
