Mallabia, Spain
The following description is courtesy of AZAB.
Traditions in a Global World
Globalization also imposes on urbanism a loss of contextual and social values that are transferred to its plans and buildings.
In this way, spaces emerge from their referential qualities, traditions, landscapes or memory to adopt a global aesthetic dominated by technology and image. Given this situation, it turns out that architecture recovers traditional spaces by updating their uses and generating symbolic places that facilitate the identification of the inhabitants with their context.
The new intervention in Mallabia pursues an update of its central public space, understanding the importance of it as the backbone of the municipality’s social life.
Mallabia presents an implantation in the territory, typical of a Basque rural area, with a small settlement around the Church, the Town Hall and the square and the rest of the municipality within a large geographically rugged territory, where the inhabitants are concentrated on small clusters of hamlets.
Understanding this particular physiognomy of the municipality, the project does not seek the creation of a new space, but to recover the special significance of its emblematic space. For this, it is proposed the introduction of a series of devices that update the square, expanding its use possibilities so that it becomes a multi-generational space.
Thus, the object of the project focuses on the construction of a covered space, responds to the demand raised by the public, which refers to the climatology of the sea.
The project is proposed for this, the covering of the external auditorium of the Plaza Elizalde, and its conversion and adaptation to become a multigenerational leisure area. This reform aims to convert the auditorium into an area with leisure alternatives for all ages, for what the versatility of uses and the ability to host several related activities or different key answers for its purpose.
The new distribution of uses of the leisure area would be ordered by zones, with different but connected spaces, which multiply the possibilities of the old auditorium generating a wide variety of uses
In this way, the upper zone is intended for health and sports with priority to gymnastics for the elderly. The bleachers have a double function: on the one hand, to improve their comfort to become a rest and control area for the infants or on the seat for the public of possible shows.
Project Details
Location: Mallabia, Bizkaia, Spain
Client: Mallabiako Udala
Date: 2017 – 2018
Principal Architect: Ane Arce, Iñigo Berasategui. AZAB
Contractor Timber structure: Madergia
Photographs: Luis Díaz Díaz
