|
What is important
about the Vila Joiosa project is its capacity for construction as a public
project that generates public space.
The volume of
construction that a major concert hall brief requires is enormous. It is one
of the largest-volume briefs to be inserted into the town. Additionally, it
is essentially a horizontal volume. Also, generally, with the exception of
fanciful situations, it is preferably blank-walled to avoid any kind of
acoustic pollution.
These three
conditions of enormous volume, ‘mute’ character and generally horizontal
arrangement make a concert hall difficult to insert into the town.
... Unless the
urban space that it proposes to belong to is its own, generated by it ...
Like setting up an
art circle and then joining it ...
Proceeding along
these lines we could think and build the “Concert hall”.
A concert hall is
a main brief (hall and foyer) and a series of complementary briefs, usually
much smaller.
We combined them
so that the main brief is surrounded by the minor requirements, arranged in
the ‘arm’ and connecting the furthest ends of the hall and foyer like a
snake swallowing its tail.
The ‘arm’
generates a public space, an open space, a great plaza, so the way into the
auditorium can be a meeting across this space. It is a space that suggests
holding musical or theatrical performances in the open and gives the feeling
of entering the spatial and public space of the Concert Hall even before its
real entrance is reached.
It is a place that
generates a shadow, that projects a circle of shade both on the floor plan
and in section. On the floor plan because this shadow constructs a prior
environment that simultaneously separates the project from the city and
joins them together. In elevation because the shadow steps in like a built
layer, cutting through the main block and giving it a smaller, more urban
scale. This creates a depth that the concert hall, plane and wall, evidently
does not possess.
The geometry we
proposed was one that reminded us of that of the hills and those of
buildings which, while not distinguishing planes of façades and roofs,
employ a single way to create breaks between the horizontal or sloping
planes of the roof and the vertical or sloping planes of the façades.
A single material
runs through the building, constructing walls and roofs. A piece of plastic,
sustainable in its construction, evolution and disposal.
In this way, the
project reconstructs the image of the mountain we saw from the place where
the concert hall now stands. |
