Buero Vallejo Theatre in Guadalajara
Spain CCC ES
Rojo Fernandez-Shaw
Ángel Verdasco
2002
Type
Theatre
Tags
cultural facilities, performing spaces, Spain ccc
Visitability
Allowed
Description
A setting, a plot, a perimeter, a programme... all stacked on one side. On the other, the peculiar balance between the abstract and the specific, through which architectural ideas are formulated. And the actual physical place, in its indefiniteness and inconsistency, is replaced by a condition of forces, a condition of relations between the parts of the problem. This is how the Guadalajara Theatre Auditorium approaches architecture and, in this sense, tries to explore these limitations. The project is conceived as something detached from its physical environment, but necessarily part of it. Alignment was therefore a factor to be considered. However, deriving any meaning from it or transcending its physical relevance is really difficult to achieve.As a perimeter, the alignment is designed like the surface of a vessel that delineates and differentiates the outside air from the inside contents. The clay surface will thus become a stress accumulator, a membrane whose equilibrium will depend on the gradient between internal and external stresses. But once equilibrium is reached, the surface of the vessel will also be the boundary that delimits an independent inner environment, a self-explanatory area of formal relations that does not seek to influence its physical surroundings other than by its own uniqueness, its autonomy in a system that encourages fragmentation or continuity over order or hierarchy.The linear and repetitive arrangement of the bays, interrupted only by the hollowed space, reveals the conditions that make the problem visible: architecture must start from scratch, self-sufficient both in arrogance and orphanhood. The aim is to reproduce, as in a laboratory culture, all the elements that characterise urban systems: a repetitive formal order capable of managing the extension, the presence of a singular spatial event, a formal resolution of the counterpoint between both, a material continuity capable of controlling the whole, etc.This architecture does not intend to make a proposal beyond its physical limits. It is not intended, therefore, to influence the form or perception of the city as a whole. However, it is intended as an expression of the introspective character that architecture enjoys as a way of thinking. (Description provided by the architects)