Precedents

Education Institute, Zamora, Spain (architect: Manuel de las Casas)

Lying on the north-west frontier of Spain where it joins Portugal, Zamora is one of the smaller Castilian cities, yet it still has a strong historic presence. In medieval romances, the city was evocatively known as la bien cercada (the closed one) on account of its virtually impregnable fortifications. (One notable siege lasted seven months.) Ranged along the sloping banks of the River Douro are the thick-walled, hermetic enclaves of its ancient quarters. The city is studded with simple Romanesque and early Gothic churches dating from the twelfth century, built to consolidate old Castile’s sense of security following a series of victorious campaigns against Moorish invaders.

Inevitably, some of Zamora’s churches have fallen into disrepair and disuse, but their very particular functional and material qualities (combined with the growing secularization of Spanish society) often deter attempts at rehabilitation. This was the challenge faced by the Madrid-based architect Manuel de las Casas, who won a competition to design a new institute for Hispano-Portugrese studies on a site occupied by the remnants of a medieval church. The extreme contradiction between the instinctive urge to preserve history and the demands of a modern educational building might seem hard to reconcile, yet de las Casas has responded to this difficult brief with great sensitivity. His key concern was to restore and enhance the surviving buildings, but these are tactfully brought into conversation with a series of new interventions. These parts are explicitly and identifiably contemporary, but they also preserve a sense of the original complex, like brand new pieces in an immemorial jigsaw.

Set on a slightly elevated site overlooking the River Douro and the city beyond, the early Gothic church and its attendant chapels originally formed part of a larger convent, By the time de las Casas arrived, most of the original convent and church buildings had been lost; all that remained were fragments of the apse of the main church and parts of smaller side chapels.

The L-shaped configuration of the new building organizes and defines the external spaces along the lines established by the original convert plan. Low, horizontal volumes divide the site in two. On the north side a new public garden planted with rows of cypress bushes and plum trees recolonizes ground originally occupied by the nave of the main church, now ling since demolished. A block of three classrooms runs along the south edge of the garden, linked at right angles to the library. Facing east over the garden towards the church ruins, the library houses the librarian’s offices and archives at ground level, with a large reading room above. A glass curtain wall opens up the reading room to spectacular views of the river and city beyond. On the south side of the convent precincts, the new wings enclose a more intimate quadrangle on the site of the old cloister.

Echoing historic precedent, the classrooms and library spill out onto the public garden, while residential rooms (modern versions of monks’ cells) ate grouped around the quieter quadrangle. In the middle of the quad is a smooth lawn, planted with small lime trees, and a restored well. Old and new elements are unified by a flat roof that extends to become a sheltering portico, protecting and framing the ruins.

The new parts explore an elegantly reductive, Miesian vocabulary of linear boxes clad in curtain wall glazing and rusted Corten steel panels. The simple formal language allows the tones and textures of the different materials to be clearly articulated, most expressively between the cream stone of the church fragments and the rusted steel cladding of the new building. The artificially weathered steel also resonates with the eroded stone of the ancient remains, although in the case of the latter, the patina of ageing was the work of centuries rather than chemically induced.

Wherever possible, the existing fabric is gently coaxed back into use, so the old buildings are properly recolonized instead of simply being static scenography. The convent’s former cellar, for instance, is transformed into a function hall, with a cafeteria above. The San Buenaventura Chapel, near the entrance, is restored as a smaller hall for receptions or meetings and its apse reconstructed as a modest entrance portico for the entire complex.

Within the larger Dean Chapel, de las Casas has placed a small exhibition and conference building. Part of the new space is enclosed by a tall glazed screen that appears magically and ethereally insubstantial against the massive stone walls of the chapel. The glass is held in place by very thin steel mullions, a particularly refined piece of detailing that exemplifies the care and tectonic sensitivity evident throughout the project. Light pours into the chapel through wide slots of clerestory glazing. Above, new roofs of stone and steel trace the outlines of old geometries.

Lying to the south of Dean Chapel of another remnant of the original convent, the Escalante Chapel, which has the practical advantage of being able to close off spaces that are not in use. Set against the mystical ruins, de las Cadas’ logical, linear boxes also explore the polarity of the rational against romantic, yet both are affirmed in a scheme which unites the city’s past and present with intelligence, clarity and sensitivity. (By CARLA BERTOLUCCI, from Architectural Review, 1999, June)