The Soledad Sevilla Studio

Fernando Alda

• Architectes

The Soledad Sevilla artist studio project arises from a collaborative process that began ten years ago in the mutual and shared interest in the agricultural architecture of the Vega de Granada, and more specifically, in the tobacco drying sheds. Houses of shade and air is the name of the line of research proposed by us about its origin as industrial architecture, its popular constructive development, its poetics, its materiality and its ability to be understood as recyclable spaces. These values inspired a prolific artistic production by Soledad Sevilla, perhaps with a greater emphasis on their ephemeral nature, their veiling, the light that passes through them and the trace of time that has passed, according to her own words. This set of works, which are manifested both in the field of painting and sculpture, later nourished the project of the artist's new work studio, a space that is housed in the fertile plain itself, on the perimeter of the urban area of the village of Otura.

photo_credit Fernando Alda — Fernando Alda

The project occupies a small plot of elongated proportion and is divided into two longitudinal bands, main and auxiliary, facing north, opening towards the plain, occupied by an irrigated olive grove. On the opposite façade, almost urban, the built volume folds towards the south, protecting itself from the summer sun with a triangular latticework with a similar geometry to the nearby drying sheds but on a larger scale. A connection between both buildings, studio and dryer, that is a geometric and biographical journey of the research for both, architect and artist. The same geometry on a smaller scale perforates the access carpentry to lighten its presence and draw the shadows on the patio floor. In this way, a single geometric resource in different formats resolves the relationships of the project and the place through various filters and lattices. Under the studio there is a warehouse that is illuminated through two courtyards.

Finally, a roof in a form of a folded wing covers the main band, rising to capture the northern light from the surrounding olive grove, the generated plane serves as support for photovoltaic production. Similarly, the roof is detached from the horizontal plane in a southerly direction to capture the cross air, although in this case it is protected by the same ceramic lattice of the exterior façade.