Urban environment
The Puente la Reina square in the Txantrea neighbourhood of Pamplona is a meeting place for the local residents. It is a space created more than 50 years ago, of a pleasant scale and proportions in keeping with the density of the area, flanked by two longitudinal blocks of flats facing each other, and between which there are landscaped and tree-lined areas, with some large examples, while the other two ends are open to the rest of the urban area.
These fronts offer the square a commercial plinth made up of premises housing different activities, all of them of identical dimensions and joined together by a sheet of folded concrete in the manner of a canopy, giving the impression of being in an open-air market that, owing to the decadence of neighbourhood and retail trade, knew better times, with the consequent loss of life in the square, which has given way to abandonment and urban vandalism.
Intervention
The reconversion of an old butcher's shop that has been closed for years, in our architectural studio, represents the opportunity to give back part of the life to the square by implementing a new use and establishing new relationships, which is reinforced with a single glazed front to enjoy from the inside the environment and being able to appreciate from it, the activity that we carry out, while maintaining the original signage to claim the traditional commerce at the foot of the street.
It is a unique space with a table where we work freely, with a more or less approximate location for each person and where we place ourselves according to tasks or collaborations, thus promoting a free, flexible way of working that is easily adaptable to different configurations. In this space, the most public and visible part (permanent work area and meeting area) is located at the front, towards the square, and the service area (office, toilet, storage) towards the back.
Materiality
The fear of the blank canvas helped us to resolve the materiality of the studio, through the alternating succession of planes of small-format yellow ceramic tiles that give a certain identity and identify the intervention with our image, in contrast with the predominant white of the furniture and the material that is usually used in architecture: paper.
Team:
RUE Architects: Raul Montero Martínez, Emilio Pardo Rivacoba, Amaia de la Era Muro
Aparejador: Andoni Ciaurriz Arrarás
Photography: Raul Montero Martínez
