Text description provided by the architects. The Cultural Center is located in the urban center of the municipality, in the Plaza de la Constitución. In this square, the isolated presence of the old Church of the Assumption stands out, the only building that maintains its historical feel in a heterogeneous and very renovated context due to the significant demographic growth of the population, very close to the city of Salamanca.
The new building is based on the site, choosing the best of it as a reference: the church, its access porch, the columned row, whose light and open character constituted the formal reference of the proposal. The Cultural Center is part of a large portal, an open gallery that immerses us in the history of buildings conceived for popular use, such as the Stoas, permeable and functionally flexible constructions.
The portico, which faces the square, during the day, protects from solar incidence, giving intimacy to the interior space, and from the inside it provides us with the fiction of being outside, an ambiguity that is reversed at dusk, when the interior space is projected towards the outside as a scenography whose protagonists are the people dedicated to different cultural tasks, who invite us to participate in them.
The rhythmic order of the loggia is synthesized with a free and fluid interior space capable of hosting a diverse cultural program developed on a floor plan with an irregular triangular morphology on different levels above ground, as the construction of the living room was finally rejected by the property. acts that occupied the basement level and that were contemplated in the proposal for the preliminary project competition; The rear patio and the void of the lobby, also with a triangular base, that illuminated the basement space, were then somewhat orphaned of their greater functional and spatial entity in the competition proposal.
The arrangement of the service and vertical communication cores at the ends of the floor facilitates the distribution of the program, freeing up the intermediate space; The interior circulation between the server cores is complemented by an exterior circulation through corridors that also function as outdoor expansion and reading spaces.
On the plaza level, there is the lobby and access control along with a multifunctional room that is unified with the outdoor space through large sliding doors. On the first level, classrooms are arranged for teaching and carrying out various cultural activities. The library occupies the last levels, connected by an internal staircase; The double-height space that visually connects them opens to the exterior porch, where a terrace serves as a place of expansion for reading.
This new cultural facility is based on history and inherited tradition, which always provides a sense of validity, and aims to be a space for participation, a meeting place, and a cultural home for citizens.
