The new Cultural Center of Villa del Prado solves the rehabilitation of an old house protected, and its expansion to accommodate cultural uses and assistance for the elderly that the people require.
The building occupies a site facing the square, next to the most valuable buildings of the city center, City Hall and the Church of Santiago, one of the best examples of Gothic architecture of the Community of Madrid. These buildings architecture imposed on the project scale accurate, careful in materials and set the place on all aspects of their spatial organization.
The building project pursued with particular interest these intentions, both in urban aspects, integrating the program with appropriate scale needs to the people and organizing a square over the many who are in the streets, and in the materials and techniques construction where almost integral solution navy ceramic building, floors, whitewashed walls, wooden structures, they find solutions that solve current programs and reinventing contemporary forms somewhat traditional uses and techniques.
Special mention should be the construction technique used to solve almost entirely the building. It has resorted to the use of "reinforced ceramics", where brick and armor allow the realization of vaults, slabs, beams, stairs and all kinds of architectural elements without subsequent coatings. This construction technique allows a single operation to solve the structure, cladding and finishing, obtaining consistency and integrity between construction and space complexity of current architectural problems forced many times to leave. With it you get great light spaces relevant to the requirements of program, current, and it is obtained as an austere building, direct and sincere in their solutions, where the architectural elements, control of natural light and the structure are called in one operation architecture.
The uses and functions demanded by the people will be solved and an ambitious building floorplan and constructively engaged with the history and character of its authentic architecture.
