San Bernardo Cultural Centre
San Bernardo Cultural Centre
gpy arquitectos
ARCHITECTS
gpy arquitectos
YEAR
2003
LOCATION
Plaza San Bernardo, San Bernardo, Spain
TYPE
Cultural › Cultural Center
The San Bernardo Cultural Centre is located in a rural town, on a small plot with a basically square ground plan, fifteen metres per side.
The programme for the Centre includes an assembly hall, which is to operate as a multipurpose space for holding conferences, exhibitions and performances, and three workshops, also seen as highly versatile spaces that can operate as classrooms, meeting rooms or as a small library, depending of the needs of each moment.
In condition as a public building and meeting place, the culture centre is integrated as a covered extension of the adjacent San Bernardo Square while respecting the presence of the chapel of the same name, using the void as a form of contact.
The multipurpose space, situated on the upper level of the building, is conceived as a meeting place, in the manner of a platform that exists in close proximity to the elements of everyday life of the district.
This platform is covered by an alternating system of concrete elements with a Z-shaped section that extends to the west façade. Their discontinuous diecast shape forms a shade-filled space pierced by the light, showing its anamorphous embodiment in the surface of the floor.
The cut-out light and shadow appears indistinctly on the ceiling, the walls or the floor and dissolves the differences that exist between them.
Under the dispersed shadow of the lattice, opening on to both squares, is an empty, bare space activated by light.
