Art school in Valladolid

About

The building is located by the Convent of Discalced Carmelites. According to historical maps, the plot was part of the convent’s kitchen gardens, and this condition marks the character of the proposal from the beginning. Towards the city it expresses an architecture of earth walls; towards the interior, an architecure of courtyards. The project had to be respectful to its historic context. However, it had to harbor a space for creativity and dreams. It was essential to materialize that dual nature. The exterior is made of black brick: that architecture of ‘tapias’ (earth walls) with the texture, materiality, and color capable of conveying a certain mystery that evokes the inner world of creativity. By contrast, the interior is designed as a technological, white, and luminous space with formal allusions to industrial architecture of production and manufacture. The project is based on the architecture of courtyards of the adjoining convent. One of the courtyards articulates the area of classrooms in two heights while the other, slightly larger, organizes the workshops under a plane of folded concrete. This plane appears straight in its respectful presence on the facade, while being fragmented inward, opening large windows onto the courtyard, a central space conceived as an agora of young dynamic and versatile creativity where students can share their experiences. The courtyards thus become spaces for exhibition, for performances or for socializing, updating a traditional typological scheme.

Sources

• Arquitectura Viva