This building is placed in Novelda, a small town near Alicante (Spain). It consists in a renovation of an old school building ant its yard to allow new public uses.
This proposal is a work about the reuse of old buildings and their adaptation to contemporary needs. In this sense the Casal de la Juventud reinvents itself and establishes a dialogue between each stage of its evolution.
Life opens up, in this case, creating a new wrapper able to equip the building and the plaza with new technologies and services. The plaza is raised as a hub of social activity in Novelda. This system consists in connecting paths that also define soft areas that can adapt and establish links with what is happening inside the building.
Working with an old school offers the opportunity to have the yard, which is a valuable open space within the dense urban fabric. This courtyard is a place that complements and makes possible the use of this new building. Materiality and lighting are the way this proposal establishes new links and relationships between the building and the public space. We try to provide complete and sophisticated equipment to this building and its plaza, through the installation of a new structure that surrounds the old school, with its own program, and also the support for the new activities. This structure provides lighting, energy and information systems, that define the specific environments for all the different situations that may happen.
