Project description by Pablo Manuel Millán Millán
This project essentially affects the reunion of forgotten and lost spaces. We found a monastery of Poor Clare nuns, a building from the 16th century, which had been filled with homes after ceasing to be a religious space in 1835. The occupation process blurred the footprint of the complex to the point of fitting several homes into the own church.
After a process of acquisition of each of the properties by the Bea de Segura City Council, a process of documentation and study of the existing material realities began, both at a historical, archaeological and architectural level. Once this was completed, we were able to blur the trace of the original layout of the monastery and thus be able to propose the idea of carrying out a volumetric recovery of both the religious space and the adjacent rooms.
When the project arises more from an exercise of emptying than an exercise of addition, it is the existing elements that define the intervention and the new additions seek to underline the project character of the originals. Since all the phases leave their mark, the process of revealing each of the events that occurred in these spaces becomes a process of rediscovering history.
Restoration and volumetric recovery of the Old Monastery of Santa Clara as a Cultural Center by Pablo Manuel Millán Millán. Photograph by Javier Callejas Sevilla.
The project, after eliminating additions in the interior spaces, highlights and leaves each of the fossilized marks on the walls as part of the history of the monastery. On the exteriors, an anastylosis is carried out from various scattered pieces, recovering part of the volumetry of the old cloister that gave access to the church.
The entire process, both project and work, was carried out for more than four years, a time in which we were able to document, investigate, analyze and agree among the different participating agents on the most appropriate solution for the recovery of this heritage space.
Pablo Manuel Millán Millán is Doctor Architect by the University of Seville with the thesis 'Inhabiting the cliff: the little convent as a promoter of a new architecture in the hills of Valparaiso.' After completing the "Master in Architecture and Historical Heritage" and the "Master in Management of Latin American and Andalusian Heritage", he has focused his study on the contemporary analysis of historical buildings and structures.
At present, together with the research and teaching activity carried out at the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Seville, he is a researcher at the School of Architecture and Design of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso in Chile. Among his recent works, we could highlight the project for the rehabilitation and conservation of the San Francisco de Estepa Convent (Seville), the Rehabilitation of the 16th century Royal Butchers of Porcuna (Jaén), the conservation project of the Greater Sacristy of the Sanctuary of Regla in Chipiona (Cádiz), the restoration of the Monastery of San Juan de la Penitencia in Alcalá de Henares (Madrid) or the restoration of the Chapel in Martín de la Jara (Seville).
He has been awarded with the best academic record by Fundación Caja de Arquitectos; 2nd Europe Architecture Award 2017; Build Architecture Award or recently nominated for the Andrés de Vandelvira awards.
