Architizer is a web log dedicated to the past times , present and future of architectural design . They purge the internet finding the best / coolest / weird structures the great unwashed crawl around in . Today they look at effort torehabilitate a 19th hundred prison house into a 21st century civic center .
When this elegant brick building was rear in Palencia at the bit of the nineteenth hundred , it was to house petty criminals and serious offenders . No one could have guessed that more than a hundred years afterward , it would be a hub of encyclopedism and culture for the citizen of the small southwesterly Spanish town .
Yet what was once Palencia Provincial Prison is nowPalencia Civic Center , offering music object lesson , meet rooms , a program library , and more . TheNeo - Mudejar - trend building was converted byEXIT Architectsin 2011 . study on .
As the designers explain on their project page , the stout building lend itself to redevelopment . They stripped the building of everything but its load - bearing wall , replacing the roof with zinc panelling , and infilled the open wall with transparent tile . The four wings of the prison offered an organizing shape , and the architect fills the resulting receptive spaces with novel volumes .
Lighting the subdued spaces , which were project for security rather than natural light , evidence a challege . “ It is a undertaking that respects the existing construction , ” spell the architects , “ which is given a contemporary , lighter appearance , and where the natural light will make for a key role . ” skip to preserve as much as the exist construction as possible , they pick out a type of semi - vapourous louver to garment the young wall and ceilings . The centerpiece of the structure is its subroutine library , turn up in an old cell block and light up by massive circular fanlight cut through the old construction . Above , visitors can slacken on the roofscape form by the brightness .
Spain is a budget - strapped country , and the EU is view it close as the billet in Greece develop . As such , its budget for ethnic and public works projects has shrunk rapidly ( though Zaha argues that’sno excusefor asceticism in computer architecture ! ) . It ’s a rattling precedent for a more and more common quandary , as architects face to do more with less .
control out more on thePalencia Civic CenterbyEXIT Architectsover on itsproject page .
republish with license fromArchitizer . Images © Fernando Guerra , FG+SG Architectural Photography .
Architecture
Daily Newsletter
Get the upright technical school , science , and culture news in your inbox daily .
News from the future tense , deliver to your present .
You May Also Like
