The team of Extudio, Matos Castillo Arquitectos, and Toni Gelabert Arquitecte has worked to create a new facility with a clear contemporary and collective will, following three action strategies that have allowed them to carry it out successfully:
- The first strategy consisted of separating it into two parts. They built two buildings, generating new independent accesses and creating a public place in the form of a square raised above the level of the streets that surround them, with good accessibility.
Renovation of the House of Culture as a Municipal Library and Theater by Extudio, Matos Castillo Arquitectos, and Toni Gelabert Arquitecte. Photograph by José Hevia.
- The second strategy is about materials, keeping brick as the façade material. Ceramics are very present in the urban context of Boadilla, even in nearby heritage elements such as the wall of the Gardens of the Palace of the Infante Don Luis from the s. XVIII, or the set of the Church of San Cristóbal, whose nucleus dates from the s. XIII.
- The third strategy is structural, reversing the direction of the loads. The pillars of the intermediate floors that previously worked in tension to support the theater ceiling now work in compression, unloading on two large post-stressed beams on the theater ceiling.
Renovation of the House of Culture as a Municipal Library and Theater by Extudio, Matos Castillo Arquitectos, and Toni Gelabert Arquitecte. Photograph by José Hevia.
Renovation of the House of Culture as a Municipal Library and Theater by Extudio, Matos Castillo Arquitectos, and Toni Gelabert Arquitecte. Photograph by José Hevia.
Description of project by Extudio, Matos Castillo Arquitectos, Toni Gelabert Arquitecte
The rehabilitation project of the House of Culture of Boadilla for its use as a new library and municipal theater works on a building from the 1980s that housed two mixed uses in a somewhat confusing way. The new building is planned as a place of public vocation that takes advantage of the urban, programmatic, and material conditions of the original building, rearranging each of these parameters with a contemporary and collective will.
The first strategy is to separate the building into two parts. New independent accesses are generated that, facing each other, build a public place in the form of a square raised above the level of the streets that surround it. An intermediate space, a hard and accessible square, to which the entrances to the library and theater open.
Renovation of the House of Culture as a Municipal Library and Theater by Extudio, Matos Castillo Arquitectos, and Toni Gelabert Arquitecte. Photograph by José Hevia.
The second of the strategies is material. The new building maintains brick as the façade material, with the aim of combining innovation and tradition. Ceramics are very present in the urban context of Boadilla, even in nearby heritage elements such as the wall of the Gardens of the Palace of the Infante Don Luis from the s. XVIII or the set of the Church of San Cristóbal of the s. XIII.
The third strategy is structural. The project inverts the direction of the loads, and these pillars begin to work in compression, unloading on two large post-tensioned beams on the theater ceiling. In this way, we optimize the urban conditions at the volume level, achieving a new large reading room under the roof.
