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Architects: WaterScales arquitectos
- Area: 297 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:Fernando Alda Calvo, Ayuntamiento de Álora
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Manufacturers: Granitos Quintana, Pavysan SL, Philips exterior
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Lead Architect: Carmen Barrós Velázquez y Francisco J. del Corral del Campo
Text description provided by the architects. Void of times and textures. About the place. The demolition of the house of Pepe Rosas, a well-known flamenco singer, in the city's historic center of Álora, created an urban void with views, both through an archaeological industrial space of the XVI century and through the Arab castle.
During the excavations, appeared some interesting spaces. In the southern half, three storerooms keep seventeen semi-buried jars built during the XVI century. In the north one, traditional stairs for animals lead to a horse shed. Afterward, we could descend to a second level, which opened to views of the village. The place is an open space that suggests the discovery of past traces.
About the project. We propose travel across the void, the historical legacy of textures, materials, spaces, and views, in order to understand the historical period of the city. We recover the façade line thanks to a thick brick wall in white texture. It is cut in order to create a mysterious discovery of the inner space.
On the street side, a line made with spikes shows the trace of the ancient entrance to Pepe Rosa’s house. Also, a spy hole invites discovering an unusual view of the hill and the castle.
After a narrow entrance, the space appears and is activated thanks to a metallic runway. Built with overlapping pieces, it tries to be made of transparencies. It is a platform for both discovering the downstairs store spaces and also a viewpoint towards the horizon. The veranda shows and guides. Some perforated texts give information about near spaces. Others, aerial ones, point out landscape milestones such as the castle and the hills. The veranda is a filter, strip that shows the path to the traveler following different remarkable materials that explain ancient uses.
The concrete stairs spill into the horse shed. From this point, the intervention is just a haptic experience of textures thanks to a fluid pavement and light verandas. Downstairs, on the second level, a vibrating wall has two windows. Thanks to a light stair, made as a metallic floating carpet, the traveler crosses the second hole in order to discover the storerooms, the mysterious heart of the ancient typology that joins housing with industrial use. The pavement, thanks to its own geometry help visitors to understand its ancient values.
The void, a place for feeling time and history, is a kind of resonance box of lights and sounds that make us travel to the essence of the cultural landscape of Álora.
