The team led by Sebastián Arquitectos has presented an interesting proposal that pays attention to one of the most interesting and often hidden characteristics of the morphology of Alcalá, the construction of its urban structure through courtyards and cloisters, a vibrant inner world of gardens and courtyards, which are a sample of the different cultures that have passed through the city since its Roman foundation, Muslim passage, university status and archbishopric.
The new proposal replicates the construction of a cloister that completes the chained structure of similar spaces, the creation of a public square that organizes the access to the different spaces, a new layer like a fragmented "palimpsest," and a set of pieces that will function as urban "furniture" inserted and dialoguing with the existing structures.
Two new pieces are created to complete the set. The first is semi-buried as a work and storage space for archaeologists, which spatially closes the new cloister linked to the stretches of the old wall. The second is a solid and suspended volume that rests on the existing arches, housing the most public uses. The different functional units of the program are organized around the cloister: the entrance hall, the public uses cube, the archaeology wing, the archaeology tower and the archaeology base.
Rendering. Casa de los Arqueólogos of Alcalá de Henares by Sebastián Arquitectos and Estudio Habito.
Axonometric view. Casa de los Arqueólogos of Alcalá de Henares by Sebastián Arquitectos and Estudio Habito.
Project description by Sebastián Arquitectos
Let's look closely at the historic centre of Alcalá de Henares. We can see how the main historic buildings, monasteries, colleges, faculties and barracks, have been formed as compact volumes around courtyards and cloisters that, depending on the complexity of the programme, have even been linked together. Consolidating the Roman and Muslim heritage, this is a typology strongly linked to the historic centre, specifically the area of the university and the archbishop's palace, and which has been shaped as an architectural fabric delimited by large walls towards the exterior that displays an extraordinarily rich inner world of gardens and courtyards.
The project is located in an area of action with a high historical and archaeological content, in the vicinity of the Archbishop's Palace of Alcalá de Henares, and the walled enclosure of the city, as well as very close to the Archaeological and Paleontological Museum of the Community of Madrid. The disappearance of the former Central General Archive of the Kingdom, after suffering a fire in 1939, left a void and ruins in which it is now proposed to intervene. With such particular environmental conditions, the place and its memory are the first materials with which the architect must build, looking at the traces of the old buildings and understanding the traces of what was there. In this case, the architecture has two defined formative keys, the enclosure or cloister as a spatial unit and the wall as an element that delimits it. The concatenation of buildings and programs around cloisters, all of them intertwined by the constant texture of brick walls, ensured material continuity with the canvases of the walled enclosure and the historical architecture of Alcalá.
We propose to build a new cloister that completes the architecture that previously defined the historical access threshold, and is linked to the new use that the ruins of the former General Archive will have, a place for the work of archaeology. And it is precisely this archaeological sense that will give character to the intervention, the respect for the ruin, the triumph of failure that, once consolidated, will openly show its fragmentary and asymmetrical condition in the permanence of the pieces that must be preserved as the history of the place. The new program will assume this condition, joining the whole as a new layer, a palimpsest that completes the writing of what was left there. All the proposed solutions abound in this question, from the archaeological presence of the remains of the building, which show the ruin in all its crudeness, hiding the gaps and glass, finishes and new volumes, to the insertion of the new pieces in them as “furniture” that are inserted into the architectural frames and skeletons.
Two new pieces complete the whole. The first, half-buried, the work and storage space of the archaeologists, spatially closes the new cloister, linking it with the canvases of the old wall. The second, a solid, suspended volume that rests on the existing arches, houses the most public uses, and is visually related to the cubes of the old wall, closing the walled complex of the garden of the Archbishop's Palace. The presence of archaeology is fundamental in this project, and reaches all these spaces as an extension and part of a large archaeological museum, so that all the pieces, the restoration or classification work, or the storage and storage, can always be present for the public and users, making the richness of its past visible to the visitor.
The entire proposal revolves around the creation of the new cloister, which in addition to acting as a public square that concentrates social activity, provides access to the different pieces, and is linked, through the old entrance, with access to the disappeared cloister of the General Archive, whose traces will be recovered in the treatment of the access pavement, and with the vehicular access from the south patio. This entire complex of linked courtyards and gardens will form a new network of parks in the walled enclosure, the bishop's orchard, the museum and the archaeologists' house.
The different functional units of the programme are organised around the cloister:
- Entrance hall, which allows access from the archaeological museum or the car park, through the cloister. It is located at the junction between the new and the old.
- Public-use cube.
Two stories high, it incorporates the existing ground-floor archway and is integrated through the use of brick, using recessed joints to show that the construction of these factories is not from the same period. On the ground floor, there are the more public uses of the cafeteria, dining room and lobby, as well as the services. On the upper floor, there is the multipurpose room, or assembly hall, crowned by a series of skylights.
- Archaeology Bay.
On the other side of the lobby, it gives access to the archaeology complex and is housed between the existing walls of the East and North bays of the old General Archive, configuring an “L”-shaped piece in which an easily reversible action is proposed, which houses the research area, seminars and offices.
- Archaeology Tower.
We propose using this space as a special safe that protects the most valuable part of the complex, the pieces. A deposit that uses the tower as a large vertical shelf. A new management system could be implemented in future phases, consisting of a lifting platform that allows the automated classification and handling of all the pieces stored in the vertical warehouse, for their cataloguing, consultation, and rapid handling.
- Archaeological plinth.
It is proposed as an abstract and simple rectangular volume, which completes the typological composition of the cloister and is partially buried, reducing its presence in the scene, and acting as a plinth that highlights and highlights the rest of the buildings in the complex. Inside it are located the marking workshop and the transit warehouse, adjacent to the previous warehouse. On its side facing the cloister, it incorporates a large brisoleil in its large slit hole, which has the double function of sun protection and allows archaeological objects to be placed as a display case facing the cloister.
