New Musikene Headquarters

About

Established in 2001, the Centro Superior de Música del País Vasco (Higher Music Center of the Basque Country) used to be housed in San Sebastián’s Miramar Palace. The new building, located in Plaza de Europa at the Ibaeta campus of the UPV-EHU (University of the Basque Country), was commissioned after a competition held in 2007 to design a new specific venue for higher education in music. The program’s density, as well as the location of the building on a constricted site, determined the project from the beginning, prompting to use the maximum volume permitted by local regulations. Besides, the required compartmentalization made it necessary to ‘stretch’ the facade surface to take natural light to each and every corner. The distinctive form of the building is precisely a response to this requirement: three deep incisions carve the compact piece with clean and straight cuts that reveal the shiny interiors to the city, as if they were acoustic screens. Inserted in the urban fabric of the Ibaeta campus, and with a marked representative character, the new music conservatory is a bold and dark carved volume that unveils a gleaming, bright interior. The building’s geometry seeks to make the most of the site’s area; three deep incisions carve out the volume’s mass with straight cuts that let natural light flood all the interior spaces.

Sources

• Arquitectura Viva