Like pavilions in a park, the project embodies a morphology that reflects a need to find alternatives to the large scale architectural object.
Given the site’s urban scale, it was understood that the final solution could benefit from a decrease in size, promoting intermediation with the adjacent urban fabric as well as with the more dispersed logic of urban construction that can be observed in this location. Thus, the natural option was to divide the programme into a logical sequence of volumes spread throughout the park, lowering the site level and the common amenities that unite everything. The programme was divided into 5+1 units: the Main Room, the Black Box, Café Concerto, the Administration, the Dance School and the future Library.
Interconnecting all areas is a floor recessed to the park, whose garden roof acts as an extension of the street and the public space. This area brings together all the common services, accesses and the foyer, distributing the whole interior flow.
The Main Square of the new system, placed at the centre, is interconnected with the longitudinal circulations of the avenue, as a natural expansion buffer prepared to host and attract large groups. Its position leads to a large staircase (of oblique function) that generates a largely performative and dynamic space. The public will both be able to move up and down, but also find intermediate spaces that promote informal togetherness.
The design for the CECQ Park explores the potential of the landscape as a performative space. If on the one hand the existing trails are reintegrated into the new design, on the other hand spaces are built to promote a performative occupation by students, guests and the general public.
The new topography generated by the fit-out of the CECQ on the hill builds a north-facing slope where paths, stages and amphitheatres are integrated. The (native) vegetation colonises the different ecologies produced by the new topography, creating cool spaces in the shade of pine trees, cork oaks, and carob and almond trees. The modulation created makes it possible to redefine the direction of rainwater runoff, generating a hydrology that retains, infiltrates and feeds the different ecologies (retention basins, ditches) which, in turn, improves the microclimatic regulation of the gardens.
