Molinos de Segura Museum

Description

The restoration of the mills on the River Segura in Murcia preserves the original prismatic shape of the buildings and creates a continuous line of the cornice that unites the passageway on both banks with the Puente Viejo (Old Bridge) and the walkway. On the flat roof of the mills, a walkway is created, a vantage point overlooking the river, emphasising the urban base and the level of pedestrians on the embankment walls near the Old Bridge. This elevated walkway leads to a new building near the back canal, which is partially hidden. It houses the cultural centre, a public library and a café-restaurant. These places take advantage of the walkway and terrace, making them lively and popular destinations in the city. The museum and cultural centre are on several levels and can be accessed from the square leading down to the mills or from the elevated walkway. The latter access is useful because it allows the library and the café to operate separately, which seems practical for their function and opening hours.The new design for the Hydraulic Museum and Cultural Centre incorporates the traditional linear and continuous style of the old mills, while also creating new, free-standing and organised spaces. The auditorium on the ground floor and the library above are arranged around a vertical axis that coincides with a skylight courtyard that illuminates the reading rooms and brings light into the centre of the auditorium. On the upper level, there is a strip of space where two distinct features are clearly visible. One is the library, fully enclosed and sculptural in design. The other is a café-restaurant that opens up to the walkway in a staggered pattern, although it is part of the same continuous structure. These two shapes show different angles in relation to their position in space. Although the library extends slightly beyond the line of the elevated walkway, its body is anchored to the longitudinal orientation of the mill collection. The volume of the café-restaurant, on the other hand, is transversal, open to the terrace and looking across the river to the City Hall.The configuration and arrangement of the openings on the north and south elevations also testify to the harmony between the linearity of the complex and the nuclei around the main activities. The square on the south side is completed to the west by the old stables, a vaulted complex that probably belonged to a cavalry barracks before the mills, whose restoration as a temporary exhibition hall complements the programme of the Hydraulic Museum and Cultural Centre. The criteria followed in this restoration project are in fact contradictory: the aim is to rigorously restore the original physical order of the mills, while at the same time proposing the construction of an extension that, without substantially disturbing this basic image, allows for the best use of the centre. The two criteria of rigour and freedom, promoted by the form and use of both the centre and the museum, can help to stimulate urban life. The proposal is therefore based on two ideas: firstly, to restore the base layer and the original historical foundations on which the city’s architecture was built; and second, to add a new formal and constructive variety to meet current needs. The restoration, sometimes purist, is thus in line with the same desire for growth that has been the natural progression of the mills since the 19th century. The relationship between the historical or traditional and the contemporary can also be seen in a stratified form.(Description provided by the architects)