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Archello Awards 2025: Open for Entries!
Submit your best projects now.

Refurbishment Building of the Monas of San Clodio

Refurbishment Building of the Monas of San Clodio
Héctor Santos Diez

Refurbishment of the Lateral Building of the Monastery of San Clodio

The current Hotel Monumento de San Clodio in Leiro is one of the most important pieces of Galician monastic architecture. Annex to the set were the ruins of the stables and cellar. A large stone caisson with remains of the vaults that covered the ground floor. This ruin, impregnated with gravity and time, was the starting point.

photo_credit Héctor Santos Diez
Héctor Santos Diez

The Tourism Agency of Galicia decided in 2013, undertake its rehabilitation as a spa and complete the whole. The program is the classic of these facilities: changing rooms, reception, massage rooms, relaxation rooms, Turkish bath, sauna and swimming pool.

photo_credit Héctor Santos Diez
Héctor Santos Diez

These were the premise and this is the result.

The original memory of the project sought to be very brief, as bare we imagined the architecture that should be inserted. In a telegraphic and direct way, the ideas of this work were exhibited and exposed:

photo_credit Héctor Santos Diez
Héctor Santos Diez

Do not touch the existing, masonry walls of 1.50m wide, remains of granite vaults, niches and hollows.

Act without altering the perimeter, insert pieces to house the uses.

Recognize the ruin as a value and read the passage of time and the weight of the inherited architecture.

photo_credit Héctor Santos Diez
Héctor Santos Diez

Insert pieces to collect light.

Insert an excavated stone plane for the pool.

Emphasize the inherited atmosphere and take it to its new use.

In short, create a new use recognizing what was a stable and a cellar cradle of the ribeiro.

photo_credit Héctor Santos Diez
Héctor Santos Diez

The reality of the work led us to simplify the inserted architecture, something that, in general, improves the projected. Each of the 6 compartments in which the interior is divided hosts a different use and materializes differently. The light is dimmed from the access piece to the spa piece. Each space graduates its light and accommodates the formalization of what is inserted to generate atmospheres and different scenarios for each use. Light architecture on the upper floor, stony on the ground floor.

photo_credit Héctor Santos Diez
Héctor Santos Diez

The proposal is a tour for rest inside this stone box. Architecture withdrawn for recollection. The interior seeks to be clear and resounding, only explodes when you reach the pool where the wooden structure rises to become a skylight. Your form is a desire.

photo_credit Héctor Santos Diez
Héctor Santos Diez

Different light (natural and artificial), different materials, different textures, different pavements, different colors and different scales at the service of silence and the senses.

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